news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

Source: Global Times

[Global Times Comprehensive Report] According to Yonhap News Agency on the 4th, citing data from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Korea Trade Association, South Korea's exports to China in July increased by 14.9% year-on-year to US$11.4 billion, the highest since October 2022. Due to the performance in July, South Korea's cumulative exports to China in the first seven months of this year reached US$74.8 billion, surpassing the US$74.5 billion in exports to the United States. China has once again surpassed the United States to become South Korea's largest exporter.

According to Yonhap News Agency, China and the United States are South Korea's two major trading partners. China has long maintained its position as South Korea's largest export destination. However, with the rapid development of China's industry, the competitiveness of its manufacturing industry has greatly improved, and the self-sufficiency rate of means of production has also greatly increased. This change in industrial structure has largely led to the shrinkage of South Korea's exports to China. Last year, the United States surpassed China for the first time in 20 years to become South Korea's largest exporter. In the first half of this year, South Korea's exports to the United States were US$64.3 billion, higher than the US$63.4 billion in exports to China. But in July, thanks to the surge in South Korea's semiconductor exports to China, this pattern was broken again. South Korea's semiconductor exports to China in July rose 39.1% year-on-year to US$3.25 billion, accounting for nearly 30% of South Korea's exports to China, directly boosting South Korea's exports to China to surpass exports to the United States again in the first seven months of this year.

South Korea's Asia Daily reported on the 4th that despite the reorganization of the supply chain caused by the Sino-US trade friction, China is an important global production base for Apple, as well as a production base for various information technology (IT) products and a huge consumer market. China's position as the "world's factory" remains stable. As South Korea's exports of IT intermediate products such as memory chips, wireless communication equipment parts, and display screens to China have become active again, South Korea's position in the Chinese import market has also rebounded. The report believes that as the semiconductor industry continues to strengthen in the second half of this year, it is expected that the improvement in South Korea's exports to China will continue.

However, South Korea's semiconductor exports to China may inevitably be affected by the US suppression policy. In October 2022, after the United States restricted the export of advanced semiconductor equipment to China, it began to coerce allies such as the Netherlands, Japan and South Korea to adopt the same policy to restrict China. Due to the large scale of South Korea's semiconductor investment in China and its huge impact, the United States decided in October last year to indefinitely extend the exemption period for Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to import US chip equipment from their factories in China. However, Bloomberg News said that since the beginning of this year, the United States believes that South Korea may become a loophole in export controls on China, and has begun to require South Korea to strengthen controls on semiconductor exports to China, including logic chips more advanced than 14 nanometers and DRAMs more advanced than 18 nanometers. Bloomberg quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that the US government may announce as early as the end of September that high-bandwidth memory (HBM) produced by South Korean companies will be added to the list of chip controls on China.

HBM is an indispensable component for manufacturing AI accelerators, and is mainly supplied by Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Storage. According to the Asia Daily, the South Korean government remained cautious before the US official announcement, but believed that due to the low proportion of exports of advanced semiconductor products to China, even if the US introduced new sanctions, the impact would be limited. (Ni Hao)