Korean Entrepreneurs Turn Their Backs on China

Korean businesses launched fewer new companies in China in the first six months this year than in Japan for the first time in 33 years. 

This seems to be the result of China's slow economic recovery and President Xi Jinping's authoritarian rule that makes investors feel insecure.

According to the Export-Import Bank of Korea, Korean businesses set up 87 new companies in China in the first half, 12 fewer than a year earlier.

But they established 118 new companies in Japan, up 46, outnumbering new ventures in China for the first time since the second half of 1989.

Korean companies rushed to China the moment the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1992, and at one time in the mid-2000s over 1,000 new Korean companies opened there every six months. 

But Korea's investment in China has dwindled dramatically amid China's unofficial boycott of Korean products and services that started in 2017 and the COVID lockdown in 2020, and now the figure is in the double digits.