In his speech to the China International Fair for Trade in Services Global Service Trade Summit in 2023, the Chairman of the Supreme Leader mentioned that "China will persist in opening to the outside world at a high level, comprehensively promote Chinese modernization with high-quality development, and provide new opportunities for countries to open up and cooperate. China is willing to work with other countries to promote inclusive development through service openness, promote linkage and integration through service cooperation, foster development momentum through service innovation, create a bright future through service sharing, and work together to push the world economy onto the track of sustained recovery. ". Promoting the high-quality development of service trade with digital technology is an important breakthrough in the innovation and reform of service trade in China, an important means for China to build a trade power under the new development pattern, and an important driving force for building a new open economic system with a higher level.
First, understand the significance of digital technology to promote the high-quality development of service trade
The all-round penetration and breakthrough application of digital technology has brought innovative changes to the development of service trade in terms of resource allocation, structural upgrading, efficiency improvement and governance system. A comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the far-reaching impact of digital technology on service trade is of great significance for China to achieve high-quality development of service trade and build a trade power.
Digital technology is helpful to reduce the transaction cost of service trade and expand the scale of trade. The rapid growth and scale expansion of service trade are closely related to the wide application of digital technology. The development of digital technology improves the efficiency of digital network, reduces the cost of communication and transaction, and reduces the restrictive effect of spatial distance on trade. Compared with traditional trade, service trade is intangible, inseparable and easy to copy, which leads to the synchronization of its production and consumption. The wide application of digital technologies, such as big data and cloud computing, relaxes the time and space constraints in the process of service provision, enhances the tradeability of services, and enables services such as music performances, sports events, medical education, etc., which were originally limited to the scene, to face the world, thus expanding the space of service trade and promoting the relative share of service trade in the international trade structure. With the rise of platform enterprises, the continuous innovation of data service products with data as the core element is helpful to enrich the types of service products and further expand the scale of service trade.
Digital technology is helpful to promote the multi-chain integration of service trade and enhance trade competitiveness. The development of digital technology has effectively alleviated the information asymmetry in trade, thus reducing the transaction cost. Internet platform connects tens of thousands of producers, suppliers, retailers and consumers. Through the precise matching of production and demand, it improves the efficiency of resource allocation and industrial division of labor, promotes the coordinated development of service trade industry chain, supply chain and value chain, and promotes the continuous deepening of the division of labor between industry chain and value chain, thus accelerating the reshaping of global trade network and industrial chain division of labor, changing the pattern of global interest distribution and greatly enhancing China’s trade competitiveness. Digital technology promotes the transformation of service trade to intelligence, digitalization and networking, and promotes the industrial chain and value chain to the high end, which is helpful to improve the status and influence of China’s service trade in global service trade.
Digital technology is helpful to improve the utilization of service trade resources and enhance social welfare. The wide application of digital technology enables enterprises (suppliers) to accurately measure consumer demand, thus opening up various new service business models and promoting the transformation of service trade to personalization, diversification and customization. In education, online education has alleviated the imbalance of educational resources to some extent by creating various personalized online solutions. In medical care, online service platforms such as online consultation and remote consultation have improved the accessibility of medical services. Under the condition of constant monetary income, digital service trade improves the level of consumer welfare by reducing prices and diversifying service supply. Digital technology continues to empower the social and economic environment, which is helpful to improve the utilization rate of social resources, meet people’s growing needs for a better life, and then enhance the total social welfare of trade.
Digital technology helps to empower the change of trade rules and improve the trade governance system. Trade rules are closely related to trade patterns. Since the 20th century, the traditional way of trade has mainly been the final product trade of "one country produces and one country sells", and the core of trade rules is reciprocal tariff reduction and expanding market access. In the 21st century, the way of international trade is mainly the value chain trade of "world production and global sales", and the "post-border measures" represented by services, investment, intellectual property protection and competition policy have become the core of trade rules. In the era of digital trade, digital technology has greatly eased the constraints of traditional trade barriers such as geographical distance and infrastructure. Market access of digital products, cross-border free flow of data and network security have become the focus of new trade rules. In the era of digital economy, only by constantly improving the rules of digital technology and digital trade governance system can the transaction costs caused by institutional factors be greatly reduced, thus promoting the further development of global value chains.
Second, an important path for digital technology to promote the high-quality development of service trade
To promote the high-quality development of service trade with digital technology, we should adhere to the development direction and path of openness, cooperation, innovation and sharing.
Promoting inclusive development with open service. Opening up the service industry in an orderly way is the only way for China to move towards the high end of the value chain and achieve the success of a new round of open economy. In the opening of service industry, orderly opening is the key. We should explore in the pilot first, then steadily increase the pilot, gradually expand the open field, and effectively improve the risk early warning and prevention and control mechanism. Therefore, it is necessary to steadily relax the market access of service industry, promote the opening process of cross-border service trade in an orderly manner, continuously improve the standardization level of service trade, and create a more open and inclusive development environment.
Promoting linkage and financing through service cooperation. At present, the momentum of world economic development is insufficient and trade protectionism is on the rise. Under this background, regional economic cooperation has become an important strategic choice for the country’s open development. Compared with the long and huge global value chain, the regional value chain is safer, more resilient and more responsive to market demand. Strengthen regional service trade cooperation, especially in the countries of the Belt and Road Initiative, facilitate the cross-border flow of various resource elements, and foster more growth points of economic cooperation.
Cultivate development momentum with service innovation. Technology empowers development, and innovation wins the future. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the CPC Central Committee with the Supreme Leader as the core has regarded innovation as the first driving force for development. At present, China is committed to creating an innovation-driven economic growth model to enhance the new kinetic energy of national development. The innovation-driven development model is a new national competitive advantage which is dominated by technological innovation and innovation ability and integrates "institutional innovation, technological innovation, service innovation and policy innovation".
Create a better future with service sharing. The world economy prospers when it is open, but declines when it is closed. Under the background of economic globalization, countries’ economies are interdependent and their interests are intermingled as never before. With the in-depth cooperation in the field of global services, countries will join hands to promote the vigorous development of service trade, which will certainly add new kinetic energy and stimulate new vitality to global development. At the same time, China’s big market opportunities will provide new impetus to the world, China’s high-quality development will provide more and better services to the world, and Chinese modernization will provide new opportunities for countries to open up and cooperate.
Third, measures to promote the high-quality development of service trade with digital technology
To expand the level of service opening and innovate the development mechanism of service trade, we should take the initiative to connect with high-standard economic and trade rules and improve the institutional opening path. We will steadily promote the opening-up of service trade, improve the pre-entry national treatment and negative list management system, and initially form an institutional system of gradient opening-up of cross-border service trade in China. Innovate the development mechanism and cultivate a new format and model of service trade. Build a high-level service trade innovation and development platform, upgrade and build a national service trade innovation and development demonstration zone, build a service outsourcing demonstration city with high standards, and explore the construction of a digital trade open innovation demonstration zone.
Accelerate the innovation of digital technology and lay a solid foundation for the development of digital industry. It is necessary to speed up the research and innovation of digital technology and build core competitiveness. Strengthen basic R&D and design, and improve the ability of cutting-edge technological innovation; Around the data science theory system, big data computing system and other major basic research layout, break through the core technology of big data, promote the deep integration of Industry-University-Research, and accelerate the construction of independent and controllable big data industry chain, value chain and ecosystem. Promote the digital transformation of service enterprises, strengthen the transformation and upgrading of all aspects of enterprise production factors by digital technology, promote the optimization of resource allocation such as technology, business and talents, and lead the reorganization and reform of organizational processes and production methods, thus improving the operational efficiency of enterprises; Cultivate digital platform enterprises with international competitiveness and support platform enterprises to show their talents in leading development, creating jobs and international competition.
Strengthen digital trade cooperation and establish a new platform and mechanism for cooperation. It is necessary to strengthen multi-level international cooperation, benchmark the new WTO rules, and timely revise and improve laws and regulations that adapt to the development of digital economy and society. Accelerate the negotiation of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement, and expand the space for international cooperation in the digital economy under the framework of regional and cross-regional trade agreements. Attach importance to regional cooperation and strengthen regional cooperation in service trade in the "Belt and Road" countries; Promote the "Digital Silk Road" to go deeper and deeper, and expand the global layout of "Silk Road E-commerce"; Encourage enterprises in the digital economy to "go global", enhance their international operation capabilities, and carry out high-quality cooperation in smart cities, e-commerce, mobile payment and other fields.
Promote the reshaping of economic and trade rules and improve the global institutional discourse power. It is necessary to accelerate the standardization of digital trade and give full play to the positive role of standardization in helping digital trading enterprises operate legally and legally, coping with overseas trade barriers and expanding the international market; We will speed up the establishment of a technical committee for standardization of digital trade in industrial fields, and take the lead in publishing a series of digital trade standard systems in the fields of capacity assessment, market compliance, platform construction and public services. Deeply participate in the formulation of international rules and standards for digital trade, actively make use of existing multilateral mechanisms such as the United Nations and WTO, as well as platforms such as the G20 meeting, the Belt and Road Initiative for International Cooperation, and the BRICS Digital Economy Cooperation, to carry out digital diplomacy activities, promote the establishment of standards and rules for data confirmation, data transaction and data security, and improve China’s institutional voice in international trade.
Strengthen the digital governance of the government and improve the collaborative supervision and governance mechanism. It is necessary to improve the government function system by digitalization, and accelerate and improve the application of digital and intelligent technologies in government service scenarios such as administrative examination and approval and market supervision; Using data to link people, things, capital, information and other factors of production effectively and cooperate across time and space, improve the efficiency of market operation, improve the timeliness and accuracy of government affairs services, and create a good business environment. Establish a collaborative governance supervision mechanism by digitalization, use digital tools to promote the modernization of supervision means, establish a digital public service platform through internet plus supervision, promote cross-departmental, cross-level and cross-regional collaborative supervision, and form a multi-collaborative governance system in which the government, platforms, enterprises, industry organizations and the public participate. (Author: Xia Jiechang, Vice President of Institute of Finance and Economics, China Academy of Social Sciences)