Chinese Industries in Hot Pursuit of Their Korean Counterparts

It is worth noting that the Korean automobile, organic light emitting diode (OLED), and semiconductor industries leading the Korean economy can face a crisis due to China's quantitative and qualitative growth. This is because Chinese companies are expected to strengthen their competitiveness in earnest in 2018 when OLED, DRAM and NAND memory facilities will be completed.

KEB Hana Bank's Hana Financial Management Research Institute predicted risk by industries due to the rising competitiveness of China’s industries in an industrial outlook for 2018 on December 13.

The institute said that most of the major Korean industries including automobiles, OLED displays, and semiconductors, petrochemicals and shipbuilding, will face a series of chaotic recessions in China in 2020.

"Light-emitting diodes (LEDs), steel, mobile phones, and rechargeable batteries are already suffering from a long-term recession due to China's strengthening competitiveness. In the future, automobiles, OLEDs, semiconductors, petrochemicals, It is highly likely that there will be," researcher Lee Joo-wan said,  "In the past, China's threats were mostly caused by oversupply due to quantitative expansion and China's future threats include quantitative and qualitative growth, so China brings about bigger and stronger risk for Korea."

According to the research institute’s analysis, the production capacities of OLED, DRAM and NAND memory factories in China to be completed starting in the second half of 2018 cannot be neglected by Korean companies. In particular, in the case of liquid crystal displays (LCDs), when plants under construction are all completed in China, their increased capacities will reach 50% of the total production capacity of LG Display. In the semiconductor sector, they will arrive at 20% of the total production capacity of Samsung Electronics.