Government coordination of conflicting interests in standardisation: case studies of indigenous ICT standards in China and South Korea

An increasing number of locally developed technologies have been globalising, and latecomers like China or South Korea are active in setting their national technology as international standards. This study presents five cases of information and communications technology (ICT) standardisation by China and South Korea and examines their promotion of indigenous technologies as international standards. International standardisation involves complicated networks of domestic and global stakeholders with different interests. Good coordination is therefore required. We identify differences and similarities among the cases and discuss implications. From the case studies, we find that coordination with foreign players is more critical than coordination with domestic players in determining the path and consequences of standardisation projects. Our analysis of the two countries’ standardisation efforts explores lessons to policymakers and firms in other latecomer countries in respect to promoting local technologies into the global market.