Continuously improving the competitiveness of digital trade
The revised draft of the Foreign Trade Law, which was recently submitted for the second review at the 19th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress, has added multiple provisions to support and encourage the development of digital trade, such as supporting the digital development of foreign trade, promoting international mutual recognition of digital certificates, electronic signatures, and improving the level of foreign trade facilitation, providing legal guarantees for the development of digital trade.
Digital trade is a new form of trade that uses data as a key production factor, digital services as its core content, and digital ordering and delivery as its main features. It covers multiple categories such as digital services, digital products, and cross-border e-commerce. During the 14th Five Year Plan period, China's digital trade achieved scale expansion, structural optimization, and system improvement, becoming an important engine for high-quality development of foreign trade.
On the one hand, multiple breakthroughs have been achieved in key areas. By forming competitive advantages in fields such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence, and independently developing digital products such as games, online literature, and digital reading, we have accelerated our "going global" efforts, effectively enhancing our cultural soft power and international influence. In terms of digital service trade, the service sector is constantly expanding, and emerging service models are rapidly emerging.
On the other hand, the policy system for digital trade is gradually improving. The promulgation of laws and regulations such as the "Measures for Security Assessment of Data Export" and the "Regulations on Promoting and Regulating Cross border Data Flow" continuously consolidates the legal foundation of digital trade. Core digital trade carriers such as free trade pilot zones and national digital service export bases have continuously overcome institutional barriers through trial and error, forming a batch of replicable and promotable experiences. This not only helps to unleash the potential of digital trade development, but also provides impetus for innovative development of digital trade.
Digital trade can break through the temporal and spatial constraints of traditional trade, significantly reduce transaction costs, and has become an important indicator of a country's open economic vitality and competitiveness. The Central Economic Work Conference clearly proposed to encourage and support service exports and actively develop digital trade. Against the backdrop of the deepening of the global new round of technological revolution and the profound adjustment of the global economic and trade pattern, developing digital trade is a strategic choice for China to build new international competitive advantages, as well as an inevitable requirement for promoting domestic and international dual circulation and building a strong service trade country.
Currently, the development of digital trade in China still faces many problems and challenges. From an external perspective, the competition for dominance in global digital trade rules has intensified, and developed economies such as Europe and America have utilized their technological and experiential advantages to form a series of high standard rules in areas such as cross-border data flow, intellectual property rights, and market access, constructing institutional barriers. From the perspective of domestic development, digital trade still faces problems such as insufficient independent innovation capabilities in core technologies, inadequate market-oriented allocation mechanisms for data elements, and relatively lagging construction of intellectual property protection mechanisms that adapt to the characteristics of digital trade. We need to take multiple measures to address this issue.
Strengthen innovation driven development and strengthen the core support for the development of digital trade. Adhere to the equal emphasis on demand driven and capacity building, focus on key bottlenecks in digital trade, concentrate advantageous resources to tackle key core technologies, focus on supporting research and development breakthroughs in high-end chips, AI algorithms, industrial software and other fields, and build an independent and controllable digital technology system. The innovative development of digital trade requires a sound digital infrastructure system to provide support and enhance the level of digital infrastructure. We will continue to promote the construction of new infrastructure such as 5G networks, gigabit optical networks, and industrial Internet, accelerate the deployment of cutting-edge technology applications such as 6G and quantum computing, and seize the commanding heights of digital technology.
Proactively aligning with high standard economic and trade rules, and enhancing the level of institutional openness. Accelerate the legislative process in the field of digital trade, improve the basic systems of data property rights, transaction rules, security guarantees, etc., and clarify the classification and management rules for cross-border data flow. Build a modern regulatory framework that matches the form of digital trade and effectively regulates the behavior of business entities. Optimize the digital trade regulatory model and use technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain to build a smart regulatory system.
Consolidate the digital foundation of industries and enhance the supply capacity of digital trade. Deepen the digital transformation of manufacturing industry, guide enterprises to integrate digital technology into key links such as research and development design, production and manufacturing, quality control, etc., and promote the extension of digital product value from the processing link to high value-added links such as research and development, branding, and services. Promote the digital upgrading of the service industry, with a focus on developing digital service trade such as digital finance, digital cultural tourism, and telemedicine, to enhance the stability and scale of service output. Relying on high-level open platforms such as free trade pilot zones, cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones, and national service trade innovation and development demonstration zones, we will gather upstream and downstream enterprises in the digital trade industry chain, amplify the spillover effects of digital transformation, and form an industrial ecosystem for coordinated development.
Enhance the discourse power of rules and expand the development space of digital trade. Actively integrating into the global digital trade system, deeply participating in global digital trade governance, enhancing the discourse power and influence of relevant rules, promoting China's transformation from a rule participant to a rule builder, and promoting the formation of a fair, reasonable, inclusive and open global digital trade order. Strengthen the construction of digital trade standardization technology organizations and cultivate a group of industry associations and standard organizations with international influence.
(The author is Wang Liyong, Dean and Second Professor of the School of International Economics and Trade at Central University of Finance and Economics)