"China's advanced technology, 'Red Tech,' is seizing the global market at a frightening pace. It has already permeated deeply into our daily lives." On the 13th, at the National Assembly Science. ICT. Broadcasting. and Communications Committee audit, Lee Jeong-heon of the Democratic Party of Korea warned that China-origin advanced technology is overwhelming Korea.
At the audit, questions kept coming about the government's response to China-origin advanced technology. While China threatens global standards across strategic industries such as artificial intelligence (AI), robots, and semiconductors, Korea has failed to present a clear response due to brain drain and institutional limits. Experts suggested Korea should learn "speed and focus" from China's success and fundamentally redesign its research governance and evaluation and reward systems.
◇Centralized system secures "policy continuity"
According to the Korea Planning&Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT), as of 2023 the technology gap between Korea and China was 0.3 years. It means China can catch up to Korea's industrial technology level in four months. But the industry says this gap was narrowed long ago. Many say Korea is far behind China in basic capabilities in semiconductor technology.
In fact, China ranked No. 1, ahead of the United States, in the number of top 10% most-cited papers related to semiconductor technology from 2016 to 2021. It also ranked No. 1 in the number of HBM (high bandwidth memory) research papers, where Korea had produced the most papers in the early 2000s. Ahn Gi-hyeon, executive director of the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association, said, "China has been publishing more papers than the United States for several years, and there is a culture among the younger generation that favors scientists," and noted, "National strategy, institutions, and individual motivation are meshing together to accelerate progress."
Since 2013, the Xi Jinping government has completed a centralized science and technology decision-making system through three rounds of governance reform. In particular, in 2023 it shifted the policy decision structure to be party-centered, allowing the Central Science and Technology Commission to directly command strategic technologies. The Ministry of Science and Technology was reorganized as an executive body.
The Central Science and Technology Advisory Commission performs policy planning and coordination functions, with science, engineering, and social science experts preparing key policy plans and the party making the final decisions. As a result, it has been credited with enabling rapid, uninterrupted implementation of national-level long-term strategies and research and industrial investment.
Based on its centralized system, China operates a multi-layered research ecosystem centered on national laboratories. National laboratories serve as hubs driving independence in core technologies and industrial modernization, with the central government directly managing talent and research and development funds. Fields designated as "national critical technologies"—including basic science, 6G (sixth-generation mobile communication), quantum information, and semiconductors—receive concentrated support, and about 20 are currently in operation. Last year, China's total research and development (R&D) investment reached 3,632,680,000,000 yuan (about 715 trillion won).
◇China cultivates and attracts talent, Korea loses it
On Aug. 3, China state-run CCTV reported that Cai Qi, the Communist Party's No. 5-ranking official and the Secretariat chief, visited and encouraged science and technology experts gathered in Beidaihe. Park Byung-gwang, senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS), said, "Scientists and technology experts were invited to a venue where political elders and the power core used to hold closed-door meetings," adding, "This is a symbolic scene that recognizes science and technology talent as the heart of national development."
Having elevated science and technology to a "national core asset," China is putting its full effort into cultivating talent along with institutional reform. As a result of the late-1990s higher education expansion policy that broadened the STEM-focused talent pool, about 60% of new Ph.D. recipients in 2023 came from science and engineering. These graduates are immediately absorbed into private tech companies. Huawei, an ICT (information and communications technology) giant, as of 2024 employed 54% of its 209,000 total staff as R&D personnel.
The government has also pursued policies to foster universities and research institutions. Through the "211 and 985 Projects" and the "Double First-Class" policy, it concentrated support on core research universities and region-specific research. It is also active in attracting overseas talent. Through the "Thousand Talents Program," "Ten Thousand Talents Program," "Outstanding Young Overseas Talents Project," and the "Qiming Program," it encouraged the return and startups of Ph.D.-level and under-40 researchers. In Sep., it created a "K visa" to allow early-career researchers to work in China without a corporate sponsor.
Korea, by contrast, is losing talent. According to the office of Democratic Party of Korea Rep. Jeong Il-young of the Strategy and Finance Committee, 61.5% of tenured professors at Seoul National University and the four Institutes of Science and Technology received overseas scout offers over the past five years, 82.9% of which came from Chinese institutions. Some professors actually moved to China. This year, Song Ik-ho, professor emeritus at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), took a position at a research institute at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu, and last year key domestic researchers also moved to China in succession.
◇"Dual strategy of long-term accumulation and short-term response is possible"
Recognizing the seriousness, the government launched a task force (TF) and said it would build a full-cycle settlement support system for visas, housing, education, and employment, aiming for a net inflow of 500 by 2030. On the 14th, the Cabinet approved a 5.12 billion won reserve fund expenditure plan to promote activities to attract outstanding overseas talent.
But experts say fundamental measures are still lacking. Lee Hye-jin, senior research fellow at the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI), said, "Every administration change severs the science and technology strategy, and budgets are split by ministry and stage, making it difficult to execute long-term plans." Some also point out that the full-cycle consolidation from basic research to application, field deployment, and mass production is not seamless.
To address these problems, the researcher proposed a dual strategy that combines long-term accumulation and short-term response. "As a long-term strategy, fix a list of core missions in five- to 10-year units, and require disclosure of succession, adjustment, and termination plans when administrations change," he said, adding, "As a short-term strategy, operate a rapid-mission track in six- to 24-month units to respond to pending issues, and make the scale and rules for termination and expansion clear."
The researcher also said the reward system should be improved so that research and development outcomes can quickly develop into industrial technology. It should not reward only patents and technology transfers but expand performance rewards to include standard-setting and pilot application, which are essential for commercialization, and restructure funding so that some performance bonuses are reinvested in field validation and mass-production transition.