As strategic competition between the US and China intensifies, Chad Bown, a senior fellow at PIIE, said South Korea should establish itself as an indispensable partner to the Western bloc and identified China’s weaponization of supply chains as the greatest threat.
Chad Bown, a senior fellow at PIIE and a leading global trade expert, said he believes the US and other Western countries view South Korea as “the best alternative” to Chinese products, adding that South Korea’s memory semiconductors, shipbuilding and batteries will be central to that role.
Bown said he was most concerned about the risk that China could dominate specific industries and then weaponize them, and noted that remaining within the Western ecosystem would help preserve technological superiority.
He assessed that HBM, shipbuilding and secondary batteries are promising areas for South Korea to relatively reduce its dependence on China, and said South Korean companies could support the global AI supply chain. At the same time, he warned against China’s predatory pricing policies and said stockpiling critical resources was important.
Regarding investment in the US, he called for careful due diligence. While acknowledging that coordinated investment with the US could be tied to real-world demand, he said the sustainable profitability of such investments should be rigorously examined. He called for a coordinated response, including the FORGE framework and South Korea’s stockpiling strategy.