(2020 Trade Fair) Observation of Trade Fair: Are developing countries the biggest winner of the digital economy?

　　China News Agency, Beijing, September 7 (Reporter Li Xiaoyu) Developing countries may be the biggest winners of the digital economy. This is the view of many think tanks at the 2020 Service Trade Fair.

　　Long Yongtu, former Vice Minister of China’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation and former Secretary-General of the Boao Forum for Asia, pointed out at the third “Belt and Road” Service Trade Cooperation Forum held during the Service Trade Fair on the 7th that the digital economy is a “population economy” with a large population. Countries with larger digital applications will develop into advantageous countries in the digital economy.

This is evident from the rapid progress of China's digital economy in recent years, leading other countries in many areas.

　　In Long Yongtu's view, countries with populations of hundreds of millions, such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey, Vietnam, Mexico, and the Philippines, all have the hope of becoming a digital economy power in the future.

This allows emerging economies to gain new advantages in the competition with developed economies, provides greater possibilities for catching up, and also provides a solid foundation for changing the world economic structure.

　　Xiaojuan Changjiang, School of Public Administration, Tsinghua University, also said recently that the importance of population size in the digital economy era is more significant than in the real economy era.

Because relying on network technology, the marginal cost of continuous replication is zero, which is impossible for large-scale production in the real economy era.

A large population can support both an efficient production platform and a huge consumption platform.

　　In addition to the size of the population, the characteristics of the industrial structure also give developing countries an advantage in the competition of the digital economy.

　　Long Yongtu said that traditional industries are very sensitive to the digital economy, and many traditional manufacturing industries have achieved a leap in quality using big data and cloud computing.

However, developed economies have transferred a large number of traditional manufacturing industries, especially labor-intensive industries, to developing countries in the past few decades. As a result, there are fewer opportunities in the process of manufacturing upgrades, while developing countries can take the opportunity to strengthen The real economy has more development opportunities.

　　"The most important contribution of the epidemic to the global economy is to accelerate the development of the digital economy at an unprecedented speed and accelerate the huge historical opportunities for emerging countries to use the digital economy to develop themselves." Long Yongtu said.

　　However, it was also reminded that although developing countries have a bright future through digital economy "curving overtaking", the roads are tortuous and require sufficient patience and wisdom.

　　As OECD Deputy Secretary-General Nudsen said, a transparent, non-discriminatory and open environment is essential to the development of the digital economy.

However, in recent years, there have been more and more barriers to the digital economy, especially digital trade, which is detrimental to the healthy development of the digital economy.

　　In addition, the digital economy is the result of the integration and resonance of industry, capital, technology, talent, and data, and various elements are indispensable.

Although developing countries have advantages in population and industrial structure, they have "malfunctions" in terms of Internet penetration and digital infrastructure.

Until now, there are still developing countries with an Internet penetration rate of less than 20%.

It also requires a lot of thoughts on how to exploit the strengths and avoid weaknesses and bridge the "digital divide".

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