General

As an important part of international trade, digital trade has gradually become a new development outlet that countries pay attention to. According to the China Digital Trade Development Report (2021) previously released by the Department of Trade in Services and Trade Services of the Ministry of Commerce, digital trade, as a new form of trade, has injected new momentum into the recovery of the world economy and the growth of global trade, and is becoming a "new engine" for China to accelerate the construction of a trade power.

Wu Qi, Executive Director of Wuxi Digital Economy Research Institute, said that digital trade is "the trade of goods and products and services delivered and provided in digital form relying on information network and digital technology", and its core connotation is the digitalization of trade content and trade methods.

"Compared with traditional trade, digital trade has the following five main characteristics: digitalization of trade methods, digitalization of trade objects, platformization of transactions, customization of services, and globalization of supply chain. In recent years, China's digital trade has always maintained rapid development, especially in cross-border e-commerce, mobile games and other aspects, and has become one of the few digital trade powers in the world." Wu Qi said.

Gao Peiyong, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said earlier that digital trade has broken the time-space attribute of trade, not only changing the main body of traditional trade, but also promoting changes in trade operation methods and other aspects, providing new momentum for the development of traditional trade in goods and services.

Based on the importance of digital trade, all parts of the country are continuously exploring how to promote the new development of digital trade.

In 2015, Hangzhou set up the first comprehensive pilot zone of cross-border e-commerce in China. During the "13th Five Year Plan" period, Hangzhou's cross-border e-commerce grew by 35% annually. In 2020, Zhejiang issued the Construction Plan of Digital Trade Pilot Zone in Zhejiang Province, and the import and export of digital services in the province increased by 27.7% year on year. In 2022, Zhejiang will further develop digital trade to "link" the world. From January to September 2022, Zhejiang's digital trade import and export amounted to 405.47 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.2%, including 245.03 billion yuan of export, a year-on-year increase of 22.3%, and 160.44 billion yuan of import, a year-on-year increase of 3.6%.

In 2019, Shanghai released the Shanghai Digital Trade Development Action Plan (2019-2021), which clearly proposed that Shanghai should be built into an "international hub port of digital trade", focus on four major areas of "cloud services, digital content, digital service industry applications, and cross-border e-commerce", and build a digital trade innovation and entrepreneurship, trade promotion, cooperation and sharing center.

In 2020, Beijing released the Beijing Implementation Plan on Building a Digital Trade Pilot Zone, taking the lead in conducting cross-border data flow pilot, and building a "digital trade demonstration zone".

According to the 2022 Digital Trade Development and Cooperation Report jointly issued by the Foreign Economic Research Department of the Development Research Center of the State Council and the China Academy of Information and Communication Research, China's total import and export value of digital services in 2021 will reach 359.69 billion US dollars, up 22.3% year on year, accounting for 43.2% of the import and export of services.

The insiders pointed out that in recent years, China has made rapid progress in the field of digital trade and is still increasing its exploration efforts. China has its own unique advantages in developing digital trade. First of all, China has established a relatively complete digital trade development framework and mainstream entrepreneur groups, which is one of the comparative advantages of China's in-depth development of digital trade. Secondly, China has incorporated the digital economy into its national economic development strategy, and digital trade will continue to boost China's high-quality economic development with the help of the rise of the digital economy.

"Digital trade has become a new trend in the development of international trade." Wu Qi said that, on the one hand, digital technology has greatly expanded the depth and breadth of international trade networks and lowered the threshold for producers to participate in international trade. On the other hand, digital technology has shortened the chain of value chain division, optimized and innovated different production and manufacturing links of value chain division, and thus reshaped the global benefit distribution pattern of value chain division.

"The rapid development of the digital economy has led to great changes in the technical means, organizational model, international division of labor, trade objectives and trading methods of international trade, promoted the deep integration and development of digital technology and the global industrial value chain, further reduced cross-border transaction costs and helped to achieve more trade flows." Wu Qi said.