About 40 percent of Chinese companies in Korea believe that Chinese technology has enhanced enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Korean technology, according to a survey released on Tuesday.

The survey was conducted by the state-run Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, which interviewed 502 Chinese companies doing business in Korea and 320 Korean companies doing business in China from July 19 to July 31.

The majority, or about 66.6 percent, of Korean firms in China responded that Korean technology is superior to that of China, whereas about 36.9 percent of Chinese firms in Korea replied that the two countries have a similar level of technology, the most popular response among those firms. About 33.3 percent of Chinese firms said Korean technology is more advanced.

KOTRA officials said there has been a conceptual change in the past five years about how Chinese firms view their countries’ technology.

In the same survey conducted in 2007, about 43.9 percent of Chinese firms saw Korean technology as more developed.

These two surveys suggest that Chinese technology has made a considerable leap, KOTRA officials said.

According to the latest survey, Chinese companies replied that continental regions and coastal regions in China favor different products from Korea.

Chinese firms headquartered in continental regions picked Korean IT products as bestselling products. About 84.5 percent of these firms favored Korean products.

But firms stationed in Chinese coastal areas turned out to prefer Korean clothing and fashion products. About 23 percent of these firms favored Korean products.

“The next 20 years will be an era of ‘coopetition,’ where cooperation and competition coexist within the Korea-China relationship,” KOTRA president Oh Young-ho said.

He added that it is time for the countries to build a new “interactive framework” for business partnerships including in the manufacturing industry and other emerging sectors.

By Chung Joo-won (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)