"7 years vs 11 months".

When BMW entered Korea in 1995, sales of only 200 units were sold that year. BMW surpassed 10,000 cumulative units in 2002, seven years later. On the other hand, BYD, a Chinese electric vehicle company, has crossed the same mark in just 11 months.

Following BYD, Zicker, Xpeng, and Cherry are preparing to land in Korea one after another. Xiaopeng was enthusiastic about promoting the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Commission lawmakers who visited China last month. Even now, one out of three electric vehicle buyers is choosing Chinese products, and the moment will soon exceed 50% of the domestic market share. The perception that "electric vehicles = made in China" is set to stick.

China's electric vehicles are not just about price competitiveness. It has a significant advantage in terms of technology such as battery and autonomous driving. The level of Chinese products has risen too high to be called cheap. It is said that the crisis felt by Hyundai Motor leaders these days is beyond imagination.

Korean companies tasted bitter taste in the robot vacuum cleaner market. Roborak's domestic market share, which landed in 2019, exceeded half, and they aimed to target the high-end market from the beginning. And it destroyed Samsung and LG's home appliance steel fortress. It is highly likely that Chinese electric cars will now become deja vu for robot vacuum cleaners. The background of Chinese electric vehicle companies' focus on Korea is the calculation that the entry threshold is lower than that of the United States, the European Union (EU), and Japan.

First of all, a tariff barrier. The U.S. punishes high tariffs of more than 100% on Chinese cars, and the EU also imposes tariffs of up to 45%. Compared to that, Korea is as low as 8 percent. At this level, Chinese companies can penetrate well with cost-effectiveness. The Japanese market is unique. The proportion of pure electric vehicles in the Japanese automobile market is less than 2%, the lowest among major developed countries.

After all, Korea, which is evaluated as a "low fence," is a good prey for China. China's overproduction of electric vehicles is a major headache for its competitors. Seventy percent of the world's new electric vehicles are made in China. As production is so overflowing, the remaining supplies that are digested in the Chinese domestic market are poured abroad.

Under these circumstances, what choice should the government make. Danny Rodrick, a professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School, advised early on that we should give up hyper-globalization and pursue shallow globalization. Jake Sullivan, who served as the White House national security adviser, also mentioned the principle of "small yard, high fence." In order to protect its core interests, selective protectionism that strikes the fence high in certain areas is inevitable.

In fact, the world has changed dramatically since the era of Donald Trump. Each of them is full of life. However, our government still seems to be bound by the cause of free trade. The World Trade Organization (WTO) system, which encourages free and fair competition, was a strong support for Korea's export, but the system collapsed. I'm anxious that we might be the only ones who pretend to be gentle and lose the practicality.

Some in the industry argue that tariffs should be raised like the U.S. and the EU to defend domestic industries. For example, the order is that auto tariffs need to be raised from the current 8% to 25%. Of course, there may be objections that if Korea steps forward prematurely, it will result in economic retaliation. Nevertheless, they feel a sense of crisis that they cannot just watch the central industry collapse.

In addition, there is an urgent need for various government-level strategies such as data security regulations that store various location and customer data collected by electric vehicles on domestic servers and prohibit them from being exported abroad, differential payment of purchase subsidies, and taxation to promote domestic production. Cars with vast front and rear-related ecosystems are different from robot vacuum cleaners.

[Hwang Inhyuk, deputy director of bureau and digital news department]