China’s Harsh Words Mask a Trade Boom With South Korea In the first eight months of this year, China imported $23 billion worth of semiconductors from South Korea, half again as much as a year ago, according to the Korea International Trade Association. In the first seven months of this year, Chinese consumers spent $953 million on South Korean cosmetics and skin care, according to the Korea Cosmetic Association. Many want to imitate their favorite Korean celebrities’ obsessions, be it fried chicken, a 10-step skin care regimen or a “V-shaped face”, a common cosmetic-surgery demand in which the jaw is broken down and shaved into a pointed V. Inside beauty stores in Seoul, Chinese consumers snap up South Korea’s latest skin care inventions such as “air cushion” face creams with water pearls and skin care box sets made by Sulwhasoo, which uses ginseng in its treatments. Even as tensions flare between Beijing and Seoul over how to deal with the heated rhetoric between the United States and North Korea, the growing trade relationship shows that South Korea still makes what China needs. But Mr. Li’s enthusiasm for South Korean snail products helps explain a development that might surprise some people watching the relationship between China and South Korea deteriorate: Trade between the two countries is steadily rising. “It surprised me that it rebounded so quickly,” said Yanmei Xie, a China policy analyst for the Beijing-based consulting firm Gavekal Dragonomics a co-author of a paper on China’s boycott of several South Korean goods in March, when the United States began to deploy the missile defense system.
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