Comparative Study On China And South Korea's Foreign Trade

With the rapid development of the world economy, the international division of labor and trade patterns are experiencing significant changes, the most prominent is that the increase in the competitiveness of export products and changes in the structure of foreign trade goods in South Korea and other newly industrialized countries. As a friendly neighbor of each other, the two countries China and South Korea share many similarities in culture, geography and economy, South Korea's economic miracle has great guiding significance to China's foreign trade.From the economics point of view, this paper is in an attempt to use evaluation index system of product international competitiveness, and based on the theory of international competitiveness and trade status of export products in China and South Korea, conducing an empirical analysis on the international competitiveness of the two countries, including comparative advantage index, trade competitiveness index, export similarity index and trade complementarity index. Through a comparative study, we come to the conclusion that labor-intensive products and raw materials in China have distinct competitive advantages while the advantages of product categories in Korea are mainly concentrated on the technology-intensive industries. But when comes to international trade, the two countries are both facing challenges of export products, such as technical issues. It is concluded that the trade of products in China and South Korea are both similar and complementary. Because of their weak in technological innovation ability, the two countries are highly dependent on the external market environment and foreign investment. Finally, papers concluded respectively the international competitiveness of their advantages and the shortcomings between the two countries. Learning from the successful experience in the development of South Korea, I put forward some specific measures and recommendations to enhance the international competitiveness of export products in China.