General

The report of the Twentieth National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed that we should promote high-level opening up and accelerate the construction of a digital China and a powerful trade country. Accelerating the development of digital trade is an inevitable requirement for China to speed up the construction of a trade power, and also an important measure for China to improve its international trade competitiveness.

Digital trade refers to the commercial activities of trading goods, services and digital products through information and communication networks based on information and communication technology. With the advent of the digital era, digital trade has become a new engine for a country to improve its international trade competitiveness. China must accelerate the development of digital trade in order to comply with the trend of the times, participate in international trade competition, and lead the common development of the world economy.

First of all, developing digital trade is an inevitable requirement for China to comply with the international development trend in the digital era. Digital trade is an inevitable trend of social and economic development in the digital era. Only by complying with the trend of economic development and grasping the historical trend of international development can countries remain invincible in the increasingly fierce international competition. Since the reform and opening up, China's great achievements in foreign trade have benefited from China's correct grasp of the historical development direction, active compliance with the trend of the times, continuous promotion of reform and opening up, the implementation of export-oriented policies and the promotion of trade liberalization and facilitation. With the rapid popularization of modern information technology represented by the Internet, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, 5G, and so on, only by accelerating the transformation and upgrading of traditional trade and making full use of digital information technology to vigorously develop digital trade can China stand firm in the fierce competition of international trade and promote the continuous development of China and the world economy.

Secondly, the development of digital trade is the internal requirement for China to enhance the voice of global digital trade rulemaking. With the advent of the era of digital economy, major countries and regions in the world have actively formulated and implemented the development strategy of digital economy and promoted the digital transformation and upgrading of traditional trade in order to seize the commanding heights of the development of digital trade, master the leading power and voice of the global digital trade rulemaking. The developed economies represented by the United States, the European Union, Japan, the United Kingdom and other countries, with their strong economic strength and advanced science and technology, occupy a leading position in the field of digital trade. As a new form of trade, digital trade has broken through the rule framework of traditional trade, and a globally unified digital trade rule system has yet to be established. Developed economies actively promote the construction of global digital trade rule system based on their own digital trade development status and interest demands, which has had an important impact on the development of global digital trade. As a major trading country in the world, in order to maintain its influence on the development of the world economy and enhance its international position and voice in the field of global digital trade, China must accelerate the development of digital trade and constantly improve the level of trade digitization.

Finally, the development of digital trade is the fundamental requirement for China, as a major socialist country, to lead the common development of the world economy. Marxism believes that the basic value orientation of world economic development lies in the common development of all countries in the world. However, under the condition that capitalism has not been completely replaced by socialism, because the capitalist economy takes value proliferation as its fundamental pursuit, capitalist digital trade will inevitably bring about a "digital divide" between countries and regions, thus exacerbating the imbalance in the development of the world economy. As a major socialist country, China has the responsibility and obligation to lead the world economy towards a more balanced and win-win development and bridge the digital divide. This requires China to accelerate the development of digital economy and digital trade and enhance the accessibility of the digital economy.  

In the face of great changes in the world that have not occurred in a century and China's economic development has entered a new normal, China's digital trade development is facing both opportunities and challenges. We should seize the opportunities and meet the challenges, provide favorable technical support, policy support and talent guarantee for accelerating the development of digital trade, and constantly improve China's international trade competitiveness.

First, provide favorable technical support for accelerating the development of digital trade. China's modern information and communication technology and computer network technology have developed rapidly. Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, Huawei and other technology-based innovative enterprises have ranked among the top in the world. The deep integration of cutting-edge technologies such as big data, cloud computing, blockchain and 5G network with the industry has strongly promoted the development of digital trade. However, compared with the developed countries of digital economy such as the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom, there is still a large gap, and the development of digital trade in China still faces huge challenges. Among them, there is a "bottleneck" problem in the underlying technology supporting the development of digital trade, such as high-end chips, high-end storage devices, and development platforms, which have obvious shortcomings. High-end chips and manufacturing equipment are heavily dependent on imports and are subject to control. Therefore, China should make great efforts in the research and investment of digital technology and its basic theories, including the research and investment of mathematics as the cornerstone of the development of artificial intelligence, improve the core technology level of digital economy, and provide technical support for accelerating the development of digital trade.

Second, provide favorable policy support for accelerating the development of digital trade. In recent years, China has introduced many policies and measures to promote the development of digital economy, and digital trade has been strongly supported by the relevant policies of the country and provinces and cities. However, from the perspective of the whole field of digital trade, China has not yet formed a systematic digital trade policy system. According to the actual situation that the development of China's digital economy is in a leapfrog period, and learning from the development experience of digital trade in developed countries, China needs to make efforts to improve the digital trade policy system from various aspects. First, deepen and refine the development strategy of digital trade, and include digital trade in the long-term economic development plan; The second is to expand the development space of digital trade from both the supply side and the demand side; Third, create a good environment for the development of digital trade and establish a tax policy system for the digital trade industry; Fourth, improve the legal system and governance mechanism of digital trade.

Third, provide favorable talent guarantee for accelerating the development of digital trade. In the final analysis, the international competition of digital trade is the competition of scientific and technological talents.   The key to China's leapfrog development of digital trade and improvement of international trade competitiveness lies in digital trade talents. Therefore, we must speed up the cultivation and introduction of innovative and complex digital trade talents to stimulate the vitality of talents. It includes innovating the talent training mode, organically integrating digital trade knowledge education and digital trade skills training, and realizing the efficient connection between talent training and industrial development; Establish the incentive mechanism for digital trade talents, innovate the evaluation mechanism for digital trade talents, and create a good social atmosphere that respects digital trade talents; Give time, patience and financial support to the basic theoretical research of digital traders; Create conditions to introduce innovative and complex digital trade talents from abroad.