(2020 Service Trade Fair) Observation of Service Trade Fair: Is digital trade a new driving force for economic recovery?
China News Service, Beijing, September 5 (Reporter Wang Enbo) As the new crown pneumonia epidemic has severely hit global trade in goods, digital trade has high hopes, and many people regard it as a new driving force for economic recovery.
But at the same time, it leaves people with many question marks.
What exactly is digital trade?
Wang Bingnan, Vice Minister of Commerce of China, said at the 2020 China International Trade in Services Fair "Digital Trade Development Trend and Frontier Summit Forum" on the 5th that we are more inclined to think that digital trade is different from e-commerce, but uses digital technology. Products and services that are developed, designed, produced, and delivered to users through the Internet and modern information technology are a new form of trade featuring digital services as the core and digital delivery.
In terms of specific fields, Wang Bingnan introduced that digital trade includes information technology services such as software, social media, search engines, communications, cloud computing, satellite positioning, and digital content services such as digital media, digital entertainment, digital learning, and digital publishing, as well as through digital There are three major categories of delivered service outsourcing.
Although the definitions of different parties are different, the value of digital trade has been generally recognized.
The World Trade Organization predicts that by 2030, digital technology will promote an annual growth of 1.8% to 2% in global trade.
Where does the power of digital trade come from?
Huai Jinpeng, party secretary and executive vice chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology, believes that data has now become the most important trade resource after goods capital. Digital trade is a symbol of the digital age, a sign of technological empowerment, and the direction of future trade development.
More than half of the global service trade has been digitized. The spread of the epidemic has brought severe challenges to international trade. Digitization has become the key to reducing the impact of the epidemic and hedging the economic downturn.
Wang Bingnan mentioned that digital technology has brought about disruptive innovation, spawning a large number of new trade formats and new models, and the overall status of the global value chain has been greatly improved.
In this response to the new crown pneumonia epidemic, digital office, digital healthcare, digital government, digital education, and digital entertainment have played an important role in ensuring people's production and living, preventing the spread of the epidemic, and strengthening global economic and trade cooperation, showing great vitality and strength.
In recent years, China's digital trade has also developed rapidly.
According to Chinese statistics, in 2019, China's digital trade import and export scale reached US$203.6 billion, accounting for 26% of the country's total service trade, a year-on-year increase of 6.7%.
But in the view of Li Daokui, dean of the Chinese Institute of Economic Thought and Practice at Tsinghua University, there is still room for the development of China's digital trade.
He said that based on a wide-ranging calculation, China's digital trade still accounts for a relatively low proportion of global digital trade, which is not symmetrical to the status quo of China's digital economy, which still has great potential.
Digital trade will become the highlight of the high-quality opening up of service trade in the "double cycle" era of China's economy.
Digital trade is in the ascendant. How should China and the world expand this cake together in the future to help the world economy recover?
Nobel Laureate in Economics Joseph Stiglitz said that the real obstacles to digital trade come from artificial barriers, such as tax system defects, digital giant monopoly, and information abuse.
In the future, people will face the challenge of how to profit from each other's trade. All parties need to avoid zero-sum games and nationalism, strengthen global cooperation and multilateralism, and increase transparency in the process of platform, algorithm, and rulemaking.
Huai Jinpeng reminded that the global digitalization process cannot ignore traditional small and medium-sized enterprises and disadvantaged people. Under the new development situation, we must strive to reduce the digital divide, support young people's innovation and entrepreneurship, advocate inclusive civilization, encourage open cooperation, and use digital technology and digital trade. Enhance human well-being.
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