Chinese Officials Visit Korea's Top 4 Groups
Lou Qinjian, Chinese Communist Party secretary of Jiangsu Province, visited the main office of Hyundai Motor Group on May 27 and had a meeting with Kia Motors president Park Han-woo to discuss the operation of the automaker’s plant located in Yancheng. At present, Kia Motors is conducting restructuring at the plant, which has an annual production capacity of 140,000 vehicles, with its sales dropping in China.
Mayor of Chongqing Tang Liangzhi, in the meantime, is scheduled to meet with president Lee Byung-ho, who is in charge of Hyundai Motor Group’s business in China, on May 29. The group is currently producing 300,000 cars a year in Chongqing.
Lou visits Samsung Electronics and LG Group on May 28 and 29. Samsung Electronics has semiconductor, display and consumer electronics manufacturing facilities in Suzhou. LG Chem, LG Electronics and LG Display are producing products in Jiangsu. The Communist Party secretary is likely to ask LG to keep cooperating with Huawei in building 5G networks with an increasing number of countries boycotting Huawei.
On May 26, the secretary met with SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won and appreciated SK Innovation factory construction in Jiangsu.
Those meetings are to put pressure on the South Korean companies with the U.S.-China trade war ongoing. South Korean companies’ annual component supply to Huawei amounts to 12 trillion won. Huawei is one of the top five clients for Samsung Electronics and represents 10 percent of SK Hynix’s sales. Samsung Display and LG Innotek are currently supplying OLED panels and camera modules for use in Huawei smartphones, respectively.