China surpasses South Korea in tech and science gains, Seoul says as ‘unacceptable and upsetting’ loss to rival spurs introspection
- Official findings out of South Korea show how much Beijing’s efforts to advance Chinese tech prowess have paid off in recent years
- Analyst expects that China’s technological superiority is expected to be a ‘huge burden’ on South Korea, meaning Seoul has its work cut out in the critical contest

In the ramped-up realm of science and technology, market competition between global manufacturing powers China and South Korea appears to have intensified in recent years.
China’s advancements in 136 key technologies outpaced those of South Korea for the first time in 2022, according to a recent report by the latter’s Ministry of Science and ICT (information and communication technology).
Seoul’s ranking set the scientific and technological development level of the United States in 2022 as the baseline. The related development level of the European Union stood at 94.7 per cent, ranking second globally. It was followed by Japan at 86.4 per cent, China at 86.2 per cent, and South Korea at 81.5 per cent, the ministry said last week.
Its last such evaluation was for 2020, when Korea was at 80.1 per cent and narrowly eked out China at 80 per cent.
The rankings are evaluated every two years by reviewing academic papers and patents in 11 areas, including construction and transport, space, aviation and oceanic, national defence, mechanical manufacturing, resources, ICT and software.
The new findings estimate that, in 2022, China was three years behind the US in terms of technological prowess while South Korea was 3.2 years behind. Both had been about 3.3 years behind the US in 2020.