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For about the past three months, Beijing has been escalating economic pressure on South Korea because of the latter’s decision to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to counter North Korea’s missile threat. Chinese economic coercion has encompassed barriers to Korean cultural products like K-Pop bands, television shows, and online games entering China, bans against Chinese tourists going to Korea, the shutdown of Korean stores in China, the cessation of investment deals, and reduced buying of Korean products.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in South Korea has grown continuously over the past two years and currently is at historical highs. However, challenges flowing from American President Donald Trump administration’s protectionist trade and reshoring policies and increasing competition from other countries proactively moving to enhance their respective business environments to attract FDI will challenge Korea’s ability to continue to successfully attract FDI. In order to remain an attractive destination for FDI, the Korean government needs to offer a more attractive business environment to foreign investors.

On 8 December 2016, about a month after my previous blogpost entitled “Chinese Companies and the World Bank’s Procurement Blacklists” was published on this website, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) re-issued its Policy on Prohibited Practices. The policy has not received much attention outside of China, but is significant for both the legal and business community. In the Policy on Prohibited Practices, the AIIB sets out its rules and procedures. Prohibited Practices are defined in Section 3.2.

There has been growing angst in the United States (US) about China’s designs in the semiconductor sector. What seems to have elevated the level of anxiety is the fact Chinese firms now are throwing around billions of dollars to acquire American and European semiconductor firms like Lattice Semiconductor (US) and Aixtron (Germany). Largely in response to Chinese moves, Barack Obama, at the end of his 2^nd term, launched a study of the state of the US semiconductor sector that devoted substantial attention to China.

Traditionally, outward mergers and acquisitions (M&As) of non-Japanese firms by Japanese firms have represented the dominant percentage of total M&As involving Japanese companies. However, past patterns are shifting with overseas companies’ acquisition of Japanese companies constituting a greater percentage of total M&A.