General

As an important part of international trade, digital trade has gradually become a new development focus of all countries. According to the China Digital Trade Development Report (2021) previously released by the Department of Service Trade and Trade Services of the Ministry of Commerce, digital trade, as a new form of trade, has injected new impetus into the world economic recovery and global trade growth, and is also 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 "goods trade realized by relying on information network and digital technology and products and services delivered and provided in digital form". Its core connotation is the digitalization of trade content and trade mode.

"Compared with traditional trade, digital trade has the following five main characteristics: the digitalization of trade methods, the digitalization of trade objects, the platformization of trade, the customization of services, and the 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 largest digital trade countries in the world." Wu Qi said.

Gao Peiyong, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also said earlier that digital trade has broken the space-time attribute of trade, not only changed the main body of traditional trade, but also is promoting changes in trade operation mode and other aspects, providing new impetus 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 cross-border e-commerce pilot zone in China. During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, the average annual growth of cross-border e-commerce in Hangzhou was 35%. In 2020, Zhejiang issued the "Construction Plan of Zhejiang Digital Trade Pilot Demonstration Zone", and the import and export volume 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, the import and export of digital trade in Zhejiang Province reached 405.47 billion yuan, up 14.2% year on year, of which the export was 245.03 billion yuan, up 22.3% year on year, and the import was 160.44 billion yuan, up 3.6% year on year.

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", and focus on the four 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, and cooperation and sharing center.

In 2020, Beijing released the Implementation Plan of Beijing on Building a Digital Trade Pilot Zone, taking the lead in carrying out cross-border data flow pilot and creating a "trade digital 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 Institute of Information and Communications, China's total import and export of digital services in 2021 will reach 359.69 billion US dollars, up 22.3% year on year, accounting for 43.2% of the total import and export of services.

Industry 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's development of digital trade has its own characteristics and advantages. First, China has established a relatively complete development framework of digital trade and a mainstream group of entrepreneurs, 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 promote the high-quality development of China's economy 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, on the one hand, digital technology has greatly expanded the depth and breadth of the international trade network 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 of labor, optimized and innovated the different manufacturing links of value chain division of labor, and thus reshaped the global benefit distribution pattern of value chain division of labor.

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