How do you see Korea's exports to China declining for the 12th consecutive month and the U.S. becoming Korea's largest trade surplus country in the first quarter?  How will the China-Korea trade develop?

韩国对中国的出口连续12个月下降，今年第一季度美国成了韩国最大的贸易顺差国，你对此有何看法？中韩贸易将何去何从？

以下是Quora网友的评论：

CaiLei

There is a conflict between South Korean manufacturing and Chinese manufacturing.

With a huge domestic market of 1.4 billion people, China is fully self-sufficient and can nurture its own Unicorn Companies on the domestic market alone. But South Korea does not have such a huge domestic market and has to rely on an export strategy.

South Korea's manufacturing industry cannot compete with European and American manufacturing in terms of quality, and is not as good as Chinese manufacturing in terms of cost performance. Therefore, the market positioning of South Korean manufacturing is very awkward.

韩国制造业和中国制造业之间存在着矛盾。

中国拥有14亿人口的庞大国内市场，完全可以自给自足，单靠国内市场就可以培育出自己的独角兽企业。但韩国的国内市场不够大，必须依赖出口。

韩国制造业在质量上无法与欧美制造业竞争，在性价比上也不过中国制造业。所以韩国制造业的市场定位就非常尴尬。

The only way out for South Korea is to accelerate its peaceful reunification with North Korea, gain access to North Korea's market and high-quality cheap labor, as well as nuclear weapons as a security guarantee (Save the "protection fee" cheated by the U.S.), and then continue its development, otherwise there is little prospect.

韩国唯一的出路是加快与朝鲜的和平统一，获得朝鲜的市场和高质量的廉价劳动力，还有朝鲜的核武器作为安全保障(省下美国骗取的“保护费”)，才能继续发展，否则韩国的未来十分渺茫。

China - World Leader

The new Korean president has turned super hawkish pro-US and anti-China. There are consequences to the Korean hostility, in this case, billions and billions lost, turned SK from a trade surplus exporter country into a trade deficit country. China never made a statement saying they are cutting Korean imports, they just did it.

韩国新任总统已经变成了亲美反华的超级鹰派。韩国的敌意必然会招徕后果，比如在国际贸易中，韩国要遭受数十亿美元的损失，从一个贸易顺差出口国变成了贸易逆差国。中国从来没有发表声明说他们要缩减韩国进口额，但他们就是这么做了。

Kev Shiu

Korea has not much to offer to China.

In the past few years, China import from Korea mainly because the goverment want to maintain a good relationship with S Korea

However it seems S Korea goverment failed to realize this fact, so now Korean product need to fight hard to compete in China market.

On the other hand, China is Korea largest market , both export and import, even Kimchi us imported from China.

If S Korea choose to become enemy of China, the Korean people will feel the pain very badly.

韩国能出口给中国的东西并不多。

在过去几年中，中国愿意从韩国进口商品，主要是因为中国想和韩国保持良好的关系。

但韩国政府似乎并没有意识到这一点，所以现在韩国商品在中国市场上举步维艰。

另一方面，中国是韩国最大的出口和进口市场，韩国甚至还要从中国进口泡菜。

如果韩国决心与中国为敌，韩国民众将非常痛苦。

on Diplomacy & Warfare

You are about to see the first designated casualty in the US China struggle.

The bilateral trade is destined to dry up, with the Chinese climbing the value chain.

The US accelerated this process.

The next is either Japan or Germany.

你很快就会看到中美战争中第一个炮灰。

随着中国在价值链上的地位不断攀升，双边贸易注定走向终结。

而美国则加速了这一进程。

至于下一个炮灰，不是日本就是德国。

GenXKoreanMale

Related

Can the South Korean economy survive if South Korean companies and products are locked out of the Chinese market because its government has sided with the US against China?

Yes (will survive) for most larger Korean companies, probably not (won’t survive) for many Korean SMEs. BTW, this has already happened since i took office so Korean companies have learned (kinda) to adapt, to some degree of success.

China is Korea’s largest export market. Of Korea’s exports, China is the #1 destination with ~27%. #2 is US, at ~20%. So the loss of revenues is not a significant one at 1/4.

如果因为韩国政府站在美国这边对抗中国，导致韩国企业和商品被中国拒之门外，那么韩国经济还能幸免于难吗？

对大多数大型韩国企业来说，是的(可以勉力存活下来)，但对许多韩国中小企业来说，可能没办法(存活)。

中国是韩国最大的出口市场。在韩国的出口商品总额中，中国以27%的占比排在第一位。第二名是美国，约占20%，所以出口收入会损失1/4，并不太严重。

But China’s share of Korea’s exports used to be higher at 35% a decade ago, before China’s hostile trade policies to Korea began. And while it was a challenge, Korea’s overall GDP managed to grow pretty much the same as before (~2.5%/year). What Korean companies did (no mystery here) was to adapt, which was helped in some ways by US’s anti-China policies such as shutting out Huawei which resulted in Samsung wng several large accounts for example.

但10年前，在中国对韩贸易政策开始降温之前，中国在韩国出口总额的占比曾高达35%。韩国的整体GDP增长几乎与以前一样(约2.5%/年)。韩国企业所能做的就是适应，在某种程度上也受益于美国的反华政策，比如美国将华为拒之门外，让三星得以赢得几个大客户。

Not so easy for Korean SMEs who already invested in plants and equipment in China. Companies under US$1 billion annual sales fall into this category. Most of them are not very profitable and rely on the larger Korean companies they went to China with (often the larger company will ask the SMEs to go with them as suppliers) for their Chinese operations’ survival. As the larger Korean companies (usually chaebols) reduce their China operations and shift to even lower cost, more friendly countries (such as Vietnam in the past decade, although the mood has cooled quite a bit recently), these Korean SMEs will suffer and many of them won’t make it.

对于已经在中国投资工厂和设备的韩国中小企业来说，情况就不容乐观了。年销售额低于10亿美元的公司都是如此。他们中大多数都赚不到钱，只能依赖和他们一起去中国投资的规模较大的韩国公司(较大的公司通常会要求中小企业作为供应商一起去中国)来维持他们在中国的经营。

大型韩国企业(通常是财阀)逐步在华业务，转向成本更低、政策更为友好的国家(例如过去10年的越南，尽管最近局势有所降温)，这些韩国中小企业将遭受损失，其中许多企业都将无法生存。

Korea has faced similar situations with Japan when Abe was Prime Minister. There was a huge political shitstorm between the pro-Kim JongUn anti-Japan populist Moon JaeIn and Japan’s right wing Abe over some old shit that Korea’s left loves rehashing for votes, and it got pretty bad. Japan decided to stop exporting many ingredients and components (such as NF3 gas used in semiconductor manufacturing, if I remember correctly) to Korea, of which Korea didn’t have good alternative suppliers at the time.

This went on for several years, and in the end it is still not clear who suffered more — Korean companies or Japanese companies. Anecdotally Korean companies either managed to make them themselves or found suppliers in other countries for most of the Japanese stuff.

安倍担任日本首相时，韩日关系也出现过类似的情况。亲金正恩、反日的平民党文在寅和日本右翼分子安倍之间为了不愉快的历史发生了一场巨大的政治风暴，韩国左翼为了选票总喜欢翻旧案，韩日关系十分糟糕。日本决定停止向韩国出口许多材料和配件(如半导体制造中必须的NF3气体，如果我没记错的话)，韩国当时找不到很好的替代供应源。

这种情况持续了好几年，到最后，韩国企业和日本企业谁受的影响更大，我们不得而知。据传韩国企业要么想尽办法自己生产，要么在其他国家物色供应商。

One thing that is clear is that it was perhaps a speed bump for Korea’s semicon business — it probably slowed it down but didn’t stop the truck.

Of course, China is a much larger beast and Korean companies large and small will no doubt go through trials and tribulations, but recent history suggests that a reduction of business due to China will not cripple Korea’s economy.

但有一件事是很明确的，这次外交摩擦也许就是韩国半导体行业发展的减速带—可能减慢了速度，但并没能让卡车彻底停下来。

当然，中国是一头巨兽，韩国大大小小的企业肯定要吃点苦头了，但近代历史表明，因为中国而减少的业务暂时不会削弱韩国的经济。

on Diplomacy & Warfare

Not too much due to their relationship, mainly technical and mainly semiconductors. China is producing more semiconductors, importing less from SK and exporting more semiconductors, materials and components to South Korea.

Actually Japan is also running trade deficit, as well as all the Western countries. Big trade surplus countries are China and Russia.

鉴于两国关系，影响不会太大，主要集中在技术和半导体领域。中国的半导体产量正在上升，减少了从韩国进口的数量，增加了对韩半导体、材料和零部件的出口。

实际上，日本和所有西方国家一样，也存在贸易逆差。贸易顺差大的国家只有中国和俄罗斯。

John Wong

A very significant cause was the restricted trade in the semi-conductors to China.

一个非常重要的原因是半导体对中国的贸易限制。

There are other reasons:

China is getting self sufficient in some semi-conductor chips

Chinese companies had breakthrough in making memory chips that’s a direct competition with Samsung, luckily the USA forced Apple to stop buying Chinese memory chip, otherwise it could have been worse

The LED industry China is also increasing market share at the expense of the Koreans

China’s electric vehicles industry is getting ahead, and Korean cars got impacted.

当然还有一些其他原因：

中国在一些半导体芯片方面正逐步实现自给自足

中国公司在制造内存芯片方面取得了突破，和三星展开了正面竞争，幸运的是，美国逼迫苹果停止购买中国的内存芯片，否则情况会更糟

中国的LED产业也在蚕食韩国的市场份额

中国的电动汽车行业开始跻身领先地位，韩国汽车受到了冲击。

Above are mainly industrial performance related except only for the US ban which is political, but the reason was from the US rather than China-Korean relationship.

以上除了美国的政治禁令外，主要是和行业表现有关，但归根到底是美国在搞鬼。

Thye Kim Meng

US relentless sanction gives China a timely wake up call.

China would not apply economic sanctions to Korea or Japan the way they have dealt with Australia unless there is a major event like THAAD. installation.

美国的无情制裁适时给中国敲响了警钟。

中国不会像对待澳大利亚那样对韩国和日本实施经济制裁，除非遇到萨德这样的重大事件。

Japan and Korea cant say to US. To deal with Japan and Korea, China must deal with the US.

As for trade China must be less reliance on Korea and Japan in case the US introduce more trade sanction for them to comply..

The desire to be more self reliance are the reasons for reducing imports not economic coercion to punish Korea.

日本和韩国在美国面前没有话语权。要对付日本和韩国，中国就必须对付美国。

至于贸易，中国必须减少对韩国和日本的依赖，提防美国制订更多贸易制裁的方案让日韩遵守。

中国减少进口的原因也不是为了惩罚韩国而进行经济胁迫，这是中国人对自力更生的向往。

Joseph Loh

Not too worried, South Korea’s president is obsessed with USA, even to give up national pride and support from the people, he was telling his people that the shame of being abused by Japanese should be forgotten, and he is trying to save Samsung, another classic example of having a leader who doesn’t keeps his nation and people in his heart and duties. The relationship with China is of least importance to him, as compared to having to kawtuo to Japan to win USA’s pat on his back.

不要太担心，韩国总统迷恋美国，甚至都放弃了民族自豪感和人民的支持，他告诉韩国民众，他们应该宽恕被日本人虐待的耻辱，他正试图拯救三星，三星也是一个典型的例子，三星的领导人也没有把国家和人民放在心中。对韩国总统来说，韩国和中国的关系不值一提，但为了赢得美国的支持，他宁愿向日本低头。

WB Lai

Ever since South Korea install the US THAAD missile system the trade between China and South Korea has been declining.

自从韩国安装了美国的萨德导弹系统以来，中韩之间的贸易额一直在下降。

R.M.L.

Related

Why is South Korea always against China when seriously relying on China in economy and trading?

为什么韩国在经贸上严重依赖中国，却总是跟中国对着干？

Some South Koreans have a superiority complex. They're like the Japanese. Not long ago, Japan kept massacring Chinese people, Japan sought them out and massacred them.

Wikipedia:

77% of Koreans see China and Chinese people negatively.

有些韩国人总是有一种优越感。他们和日本人都是一个德行。曾几何时日本杀了多少中国人。

维基百科：

77%的韩国人对中国和中国人持负面看法。

South Korea is the tenth most racist country in the world.

https://businesstech.co.za/news/lifestyle/116644/the-most-racist-countries-in-the-world/

70% of foreigners in South Korea complain about racism.

韩国是世界上第十大种族主义国家。

在韩国有70%的外国人抱怨遭受过种族歧视。

BTW, maybe like the Japanese, the Koreans believe that they're Caucasian. It would explain how they're like people of European ancestry in their belief of the Yellow Peril but only applying to Chinese people.

顺便说一下，也许韩国人和日本人一样都认为自己是白人。这就能解释他们为何像欧洲人一样相信黄祸，但只针对中国人。