General

Digital technology, with cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence as its core, is profoundly and extensively changing all aspects of social and economic life, and also profoundly affecting the market pattern and production organization structure of international trade. It is self-evident that how to grasp the new opportunities brought by the digital technology revolution in the global digital tide and build a new competitive advantage in international trade based on the characteristics of China's industrial structure. In order to deeply understand the opportunities and challenges brought by the development of the digital economy to international trade, it is necessary to focus on the transformation of the digital economy to the international trade market, and clarify its internal mechanism and deep logic.

Diversified trade participants

The development of the digital economy has promoted the diversification of the participants in the trade market, which shows obvious characteristics of inclusiveness.

First, the development and application of digital technology has lowered the "threshold" for enterprises to enter the export market, and promoted more small and medium-sized enterprises to participate in international trade. Enterprises need to pay a series of costs to enter the export market, including obtaining cross-border orders, negotiating transaction details, and delivering goods, thus forming the so-called trade "threshold", which makes it difficult for enterprises with low productivity, lack of relevant professionals, and weak financial strength, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, to enter the international market. In the era of digital economy, the emergence of the Internet market has significantly reduced the cost of cross-border display of goods and acquisition of overseas orders. The application of digital technology has made cross-border communication, settlement, and logistics coordination more convenient. The reform of e-government has simplified the process of enterprise export, thus making the "threshold" of trade continuously lower, and more small and medium-sized enterprises have begun to enter the international trade market. At the same time, the intensified level of competition caused by this has made trade shift to the "buyer's market". Who can better and faster meet the market demand can occupy a more important position in the market, while small and medium-sized enterprises have more obvious competitive advantages due to their simple organizational structure and faster response speed, and at the same time, they also forced large multinational enterprises to carry out flat transformation such as business division, Finally, the concentration of the international trade market continues to decrease, and the participants show the characteristics of inclusiveness.

Second, the digital transformation and the emergence of online markets for production factors have reduced the cost of export production and improved export productivity and competitiveness. First of all, the digitalization and informatization of the production process and internal management of export enterprises have improved their production efficiency and enterprise management level. Secondly, the distortion of factors caused by regional market segmentation and industrial monopoly is an important reason for the low efficiency of the overall allocation of production factors and serious resource mismatch in China. At the same time, regional market segmentation also makes enterprises face greater pressure on domestic production and sales, and enterprises with lower productivity have to turn to the export market for survival, However, the intensification of competition makes the export enterprises with serious homogenization have to seek market share by reducing the product price, and further make a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises withdraw from the market under the "internal and external attack". The online factor market has the important feature of "national unified market". The allocation of production factors nationwide by SMEs can effectively reduce production costs and improve export competitiveness. The good development of the online market will also compete with the offline factor market, forcing the entire regional factor market to improve the allocation efficiency, and boosting the overall industrial layout of China to develop in a more efficient direction, which is conducive to creating a good competitive environment for China's export market.

Third, the development of the digital economy has effectively enabled enterprises to innovate, providing impetus for SMEs to cultivate export competitive advantages. First of all, the sharing atmosphere formed by relying on the Internet has increased the social supply of knowledge, experience and other sources of innovation. Online high-quality knowledge sharing and professional Q&A are emerging in an endless stream, and the cost for enterprises to obtain innovation-related information has been significantly reduced. Secondly, the application of digital technology has broadened the channels of enterprise R&D and innovation, and the basic technology sharing services provided by the network platform have greatly reduced the cost of enterprise innovation. In addition, the intensification of export market competition in the era of digital economy has also increased the internal driving force of enterprises' R&D innovation. In addition, the reduced constraints of funds, technology and talent on R&D innovation have promoted their competitiveness through product and process innovation, and the status of small and medium-sized enterprises in the export market has also been improved.

Fourth, the development of digital technology and its integrated application with traditional industries have improved the anti-risk ability of SMEs. On the one hand, small and medium-sized enterprises can use the Internet to quickly learn about the changes in the international market, and make timely production and inventory adjustments through the digital production management system, improving their ability to resist market fluctuations. On the other hand, the development of Internet finance has reduced the financing constraints of SMEs and broadened their financing channels. Relying on the important characteristics of "wild geese leave traces", the Internet can effectively supplement the credit evaluation of small and medium-sized enterprises by providing transaction data and other information. Inclusive finance under the power of the Internet also provides more convenient and cheap financing methods for small and medium-sized enterprises, and improves their financial risk resistance.

Diversification of trade products

The development of digital economy promotes the diversification and service of international trade products.

First, the application of digital technology has opened up the information channel from the market demand end to the supply end, enabling the export manufacturing enterprises to understand the diversified market demand information more quickly and directly, the personalized demand of the consumer end can be fed back to the supply end in time, and the intellectualization and modularization of the production process has accelerated the output speed of personalized and customized trade products. While the personalized demand is constantly satisfied, new demand is also constantly stimulated. Because of the ability to quickly and accurately grasp the demand information, export producers can obtain higher income from differentiated production, and ultimately promote the diversified development of China's export products.

Second, the Internet market has broken the time and space constraints of the physical trading market, enabling small commodity to have economies of scale and economies of scope, thus promoting the emergence of personalized and customized products in the trading market, and making the trading products diversified. On the one hand, the shelves of products displayed by export enterprises have changed from "limited" to "unlimited", and can display more goods in the Internet market at a marginal cost of nearly zero. On the other hand, the scope of the export market has been greatly expanded, and the export enterprises can connect with the global market to sell products, which enables the minority commodities to have the excess benefits brought by economies of scale and economies of scope under the influence of the global market.

Third, the intensification of trade market competition promotes export enterprises to actively meet the personalized needs in the market. Product diversification driven by internal power provides new channels and opportunities for optimizing the structure of export products and cultivating new advantages in foreign trade. With the development of the digital economy, the "threshold" of trade has been constantly reduced, which has intensified the competition in the export market. The adjustment of intelligent production, the reduction of innovation costs under the Internet empowerment and the improvement of innovation spillover effect have enabled enterprises to quickly launch corresponding personalized products at a lower cost, which has made enterprises have a strong internal driving force to meet personalized needs through the production of differentiated products, Finally, it will help break the shackles of the serious homogenization of export products for a long time and provide a "quality" sustainable growth point for China's exports.

Fourth, the improvement of network transmission speed and the innovation of interaction methods have relaxed the restrictions on the "face-to-face" delivery of service objects. The application and continuous development of digital technology have broken the constraints of geographical distance and time, and reduced the cost of service trade, which makes the cross-border delivery of business consulting, telemedicine and other services more feasible. Since service trade has higher added value than goods trade, Therefore, it has been widely concerned by countries all over the world in the international trade market.

Organization structure networking

The development of digital economy makes the trade and production organization structure present a trend of networking and intelligence.

First, the development of the digital economy has led to the continuous reduction of market coordination costs, promoted the further refinement of the division of labor, and enabled the formation of a networked production organization, while reducing the resource mismatch caused by information asymmetry. The application of digital technology has continuously improved the efficiency of information circulation, significantly reduced the cost of communication and coordination between enterprises and industrial chains, thus promoting the division of labor in China's export production, fully releasing the productivity improvement brought by specialization of labor division, and thus promoting the overall export competitiveness of China. At the same time, the application of digital technology has improved the coordination and management level and allocation efficiency of production resources. Enterprises can more quickly adjust the internal production structure according to external market information, and allocate production factors to the production of products that are really needed. From the industrial point of view, the "national unified market" characteristic of the Internet promotes the cross-regional coordination and division of labor of export production. Since the upstream and downstream enterprises of the industrial chain and the industrial chain can coordinate rapidly, the industries in the region will allocate more production resources to industries with more comparative advantages, thus reducing the resource mismatch between regions, and helping to improve China's overall export competitiveness.

Second, data is involved in export production as a new factor of production. The deep mining of market information and rapid response enable the realization of "production on demand". In the face of the increasingly volatile export market, enterprises' "production on demand" has gradually become the mainstream. Online marketing, network research and user analysis, while saving a lot of costs, also contain more comprehensive and valuable market information. The continuous progress of data processing technology enables the value of market data to be fully mined, and the "needs" of the terminal market can be quickly and comprehensively learned. At the same time, the digitalization of the production management process of export enterprises enables enterprises to quickly adjust the production of export commodities according to the price of production factors and the changes in export market demand, minimize the cost caused by inventory through intelligence, and truly realize the efficient connection between "production" and "demand".

Third, the development of the digital economy has promoted the service-oriented transformation of export production. On the one hand, the development and application of digital technology has promoted the deep integration of export manufacturing and modern service industries. The precipitation of customer data enables manufacturing enterprises to provide more high-quality services by mining the deep needs of customers. On the other hand, the rapid development of the global digital economy has improved the level of competition in the export market, prompting Chinese manufacturing enterprises to gradually shift their strategic focus to service-oriented, and improve their competitiveness in the international market by continuously improving the level of customer service in the whole process from research and development to after-sales. In addition, the development of digital technology has reduced the cost of market coordination, and the "outsourcing" of productive services has become feasible. The "outsourcing" service can not only improve the quality of customer service for export manufacturing enterprises, but also promote the professional development of China's productive services.

In general, the development of the digital economy has triggered profound changes in the international trade market. In the era of digital economy, actively guiding the digital transformation and risk prevention and control of export enterprises, and breaking through the key blockages and pain points of digital technology in the trade market are the key points for China to grasp the new digital opportunities, optimize the export structure, and improve export competitiveness.