De-Globalisation and Decoupling: Post-COVID-19 Myths versus Realities

Abstract

According to a recent Korean study of re-shoring, just 68 companies have returned their production back to Korea since 2014 A supply chain relying solely on limited local capacity hampered by a local lockdown, by contrast, would be unable to rapidly increase production to meet demand that might rise by ten or even one hundred times almost overnight [ ]a GVC will be able to identify and access countries where local institutions and infrastructure enable production to be expanded more flexibly and rapidly China's more flexible labour laws compared with Europe, for example, enabled companies such as medical equipment producer Zoncare to respond to a flood of inquiries from Spain to Saudi Arabia in late February 2020 by drawing on China's huge and flexible supply base and running its assembly lines twenty hours per day to increase its weekly output sixfold (Yu et al , 2020) [ ]it already had relevant international networks, skilled supply chain managers, and experience that could be redeployed at short notice to produce COVID-19 test kits