Research On The Effects Of Restrictive Measures On Cross-Border Data Flows On Trade In Digital Services

In the era of rapid development of the Internet,the digital economy and digital trade have become the key focus of economic development in countries around the world and actively promote the direction.According to the official statistics of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development(UNCTAD),the total export of digital services in 2020 accounts for 63.55%of the total export of services in the world,and the proportion of developed countries is 68.10%,and even for developing countries,the share reaches 51.99%.It is obvious that digital development has become a significant feature and an important trend in the development of modern international trade in services.However,the so-called "digital divide" between countries is still difficult to solve because of the large differences in the industrial base,underlying facilities and technological innovation levels that support digital services trade.At the same time,because digital technology to achieve cross-border delivery of services trade will involve personal privacy,trade secrets and national security information and other sensitive data transmission across the border,so for the development of digital services trade,countries have very different attitudes,and some countries are quite conservative or even resistant to the attitude,which makes digital services trade barriers and digital services trade development together.Since China is at an important stage of exploring the management mechanism of cross-border safe and orderly flow of data,expanding China’s data governance model and promoting the high-quality development of digital trade,an in-depth study of the international rules of cross-border data governance,the current status of governance and the governance philosophy of each country can help identify the current international development pattern and judge the future development trend,and provide a reference basis for improving and implementing the mechanism of safe and convenient flow of data across borders in China.In view of this,this paper starts from the connotation,classification and implementation motives of restrictive measures on cross-border data flow,and combines the concept and typical performance of data cross-border flow governance in representative economies such as the United States,the European Union and Russia to lay the foundation for empirical research on the impact of restrictive measures on crossborder data flow on the development of digital trade,and the study of the trade effects of such restrictive measures can not only help to objectively measure and rationally reveal the trade impacts of digital service trade barriers and their laws of action,but also promote economies to make more accurate and scientific trade-offs and trade-offs when participating in the construction of global digital trade governance.Therefore,this paper presents three main research propositions:do restrictive measures on crossborder data flows positively or negatively affect exports of digital services?Or there are not correlated between in them?What are the transmission channels through which restrictive measures on cross-border data flows affect the growth of digital service exports?Further,what is the impact of restrictive measures on cross-border data flows on the structure of digital service exports?Then this paper develops a normative study around these three main research propositions using objective data and theoretical models.This paper covers seven chapters.The first chapter is introduction,this chapter introduces the background of the study,the theoretical and practical significance of the study,relevant definitions,review of existing literature,and the content and methodology of the study.The second chapter sorts out the categories of restrictive measures for cross-border data flow and discusses the main reasons for implementing the restrictive measures,then analyzes the typical manifestations of restrictive measures imposed by major economies on cross-border data flows.The third chapter analyzes and explores the current development of digital service trade using objective data.The fourth chapter combines the literature and mathematical analysis methods to explain the impact and transmission mechanism between the restrictive measures of data cross-border flow and digital service trade.The fifth chapter presents an empirical study on the correlation between restrictive measures on cross-border data flows and the scale of digital services trade and its transmission mechanism.In the sixth chapter,the correlation between restrictive measures on cross-border data flows and the binary margin of digital service exports is investigated based on the theoretical model.Finally,the research conclusions and policy recommendations of this paper are presented.The findings of this paper are as follows:(1)Based on the policy objectives of maintaining personal privacy,national security,data sovereignty or national industrial development,countries have formulated or revised their domestic legal regimes to regulate the flow of data across borders,while the differential and dynamically changing restrictive measures on data flow across borders have led to more complex and difficult to harmonize international data governance rules,prompting multinational Internet enterprises to face higher risks of uncertainty in data transmission across borders and higher compliance burdens.(2)In recent years,the development of global digital economy has shown significant features such as sustained growth in economic scale,increasing share of digital economy value added in GDP,and faster growth rate,which provides good prospects for the development of international digital service trade.As a result,the global focus on digital services trade is gaining prominence and efforts are being made to drive the growth of digital services trade,2019 is a critical period for high growth in digital services trade in most economies,and the COVID-19 has played an important role in driving the accelerated development of digital services trade.At the national level,China and Singapore are gradually replacing developed economies such as the European Union,the United States and the United Kingdom in the international digital service trade share.(3)Compared with the United States and the European Union and other economies,China is relatively late in the promotion of data cross-border transmission governance rules and the relevant domestic legal system is not perfect,which leads to the fact that China used to be less involved in data cross-border flow issues in international economic and trade negotiations,and the influence of the Chinese data governance model in the international data governance environment is relatively lower than that of the European Union and the United States.(4)Empirically,the restrictive measures of cross-border data flow across countries will indeed inhibit the growth of digital service exports,but the inhibiting effect decreases as the strength of servers in importing countries using secure technologies such as encryption and domestic Internet coverage improves,and similarly,the inhibiting effect is weakened by the development of information and communications technology(ICT)in exporting countries,the stability and governance of local governments,and the level of service development.(5)Restrictive measures on cross-border data flows are likely to reduce the scale of digital service exports by weakening the exporting country’s competitive advantage in digital service trade,deepening the regulatory divergence in digital trade between the two countries,and restricting the import of digital services in the exporting country,or the restrictive measures will positively influence exporting enterprises to increase R&D investment through the push-back mechanism and incentive mechanism,and further influence the exporting country’s digital service exports through the enhancement of enterprise innovation capacity.(6)The cross-border control of data by importing and exporting countries not only negatively affects the exporting countries’intensive marginal exports of digital services,but also negatively affects the exporting countries’ extensive marginal expansion of digital services.In-depth analysis reveals that the impact of data cross-border flow barriers on the binary margin of digital service exports varies depending on whether the exporting or importing country is an EU member state and the structure of the trade sector.Based on China’s current national conditions and the content of the full-text empirical study,this paper puts forward the following policy recommendations:pay attention to the progress of international data governance laws and regulations and clarify the direction of international governance rules;actively participate in international digital economy and trade cooperation to form the international competitiveness of the outer circle;continue to improve the construction of the domestic legal system and standardize the Chinese data governance management system;continuously strengthen the R&D and application capabilities of information and communication technologies to create an environment for the speedy development of the digital economy;and urge domestic enterprises to improve their compliance capabilities and adapt to and comply with international data protection rules.