Construction And Application Of China’s Digital Trade Statistics Measurement Framework

Digital trade is a new form of trade formed by the rapid development of digital technology in the field of trade.It has become the main form of modern international trade.While digital trade is booming,it challenges the existing trade statistics.Up to now,international and domestic consensus has not been reached on the concept connotation,industry classification,measurement range,measurement method and other aspects of digital trade,and no unified digital trade statistical system has been formed.In view of this,the dissertation firstly expounds the development course of trade and trade statistics,pointing out that trade statistics lag behind the development speed of trade,and the measurement of digital trade is faced with difficulties.Then,on the basis of the existing trade statistics norms and data,a more comprehensive and practical digital trade statistics measurement framework is constructed.It includes the definition of the concept of digital trade,the definition of industry classification,the design of statistical methods,etc.In addition,the measurement framework has been applied to measure digital trade in China.Finally,the main research contents of digital trade are summarized,and the prospect of further research on digital trade is put forward.The main contribution of the dissertation is to build a statistical measurement framework for digital trade and apply it to practical measurement.Each part of the measurement framework has different degrees of innovation,which is covered in five chapters of the research content.Chapter one shows the significance of the topic by analyzing the background of the development of digital trade and trade statistics,and designs the research ideas and main contents.It expounds the main innovations by summarizing and analyzing the relevant researches on digital trade at home and abroad.The background and significance reveal that the measurement of digital trade is the inevitable demand of the new stage of trade development.The research ideas and content structure mainly focus on the measurement of digital trade,following the logical design of raising questions--consolidating the foundation--constructing methods--practical application--summarizing prospects.A review of existing research shows that research on various aspects of digital trade is still in its infancy,and there are no universally accepted standards and norms yet.Therefore,it can be said that the problem studied is an innovation in itself.Chapter two completed two research contents,one is to define the concept of digital trade,the other is to carry out statistical classification of digital trade,and corresponding to the existing domestic and foreign relevant classification standards,the main purpose is to lay the measurement foundation.The concept of digital trade is defined by considering the characteristics of the three levels of digital trade: attribute,technology and business.The essential attribute of digital trade is trade,which is the result of trade.At the technical level,digital technology acts on trade mode and trade object,forming the dual characteristics of trade mode digitalization and trade object digitalization.At the business level,there are new forms of trade in goods and services,mainly including digital trade in goods and digital trade in services,of which digital trade in goods also includes digital goods trade and digital ordering goods trade,and digital trade in services includes digital services trade and digital ordering services trade.Digital goods trade and digital services trade emphasize the digitalization of trade objects,regardless of whether they are ordered or delivered by digital means.In particular,digital goods trade is included in the research scope of digital trade.The main consideration is to highlight the advantages of China’s goods trade in order to have a voice in the international rule making of digital trade.The existing trade statistical classification is mainly used to regulate trade in goods and services.Therefore,from the perspective of trade objects,the customs code(HS)of digital goods is matched with the Central Product Classification(CPC),the International Standard Industrial Classification(ISIC)and the Industrial Classification for National Economic Activities of China.A similar classification match is made for digital services and digital ordering services.It also matches the digital trade with the core industry classification of the digital economy,and gives a brief description of the emerging products and industries.Chapter three is the focus of the research.It mainly constructs the measurement method system of digital trade from three aspects: measurement caliber,implementation path and construction difficulties.The digital coefficient method and the input-output method are mainly discussed.The difficulties and breakthrough methods of these two methods in concrete application are described in detail.The digital coefficient method is mainly used to measure the scale of digital trade,and the measurement indicators include total imports and exports,exports and imports.The difficulties of its application are concentrated in four aspects.First,the adjustment of the caliber involves the conversion from the customs caliber to the Balance of Payments caliber(BOP),and also from the territorial caliber to the ownership caliber.The second is the elimination of double counting,mainly the overlap of digital goods trade and digital ordering goods trade.Third,the measurement of the trade scale of foreign affiliates(FATS caliber).At present,the officially released trade scale is mainly based on the BOP caliber.The calculation of goods trade and service trade in the FATS caliber is not comprehensive,and the data release is relatively rough,resulting in a weak foundation of the FATS digital trade data.For example,the goods trade of FATS caliber mainly publishes statistical data of foreign investment,with few types of indicators and lack of detailed data of economic links between foreign-invested enterprises and the host country.Although there are introversion and extroversion statistical data of service trade of foreign affiliated institutions in FATS,there are some problems such as discontinuous release time,non-specific,incomplete calculation and so on.The fourth is the calculation of the scale of the actual service digital trade.It needs to be realized through a certain scale of investigation.However,at present,there is no statistical investigation system for digital trade,and there is no established investigation project,which is difficult to calculate.There are ways to overcome these difficulties.The purpose of the measurement method system constructed is to achieve measurement.Therefore,based on the existing statistical basis,the corresponding measurement scheme is proposed for each application difficulty of the digital coefficient method.The first difficulty is the conversion from the customs criteria to the BOP criteria.The annual scale of goods trade published by the Administration of Foreign Exchange can be used as the adjustment factor.The conversion from territorial criteria to ownership criteria can be adjusted by using the database of international organizations.The second difficulty is to calculate the digital goods ratio of digital ordering,and eliminate the repeated calculation part in proportion.The third difficulty is to achieve data coordination and calculation in different years by using various international and domestic databases and reasonable assumptions.The fourth difficulty is to realize the transformation from the scale of digital trade in services that can occur to the actual scale of digital trade in services by referring to the relevant surveys that have been carried out.The input-output method is mainly used to measure the value created by the trade of digital products.The measurement index is the national income corresponding to the size of the ownership trade.The national income of the digital product sector is measured by constructing an international input-output table that differentiates domestic and foreign enterprises,digital product sector and non-digital product sector,and embedding national income index.Firstly,the index of national income is decomposed from the perspective of input factors to determine the possible pure trade income(pure trade GIC),investment trade income(investment trade GIC)and pure investment income(pure investment GIC)of digital product sector of a country.Then,the national income coefficient is set by referring to the relationship between the rate of added value and the total output.Split the Leontief inverse matrix by row,split the national income coefficient by column,and determine the expression of the possible national income of the digital product sector.Finally,the national income of the digital product sector is calculated by the proportion of the income of each digital product sector to the global total income.The difficulties in applying it include three parts.First,how to select the digital product department.The second is how to decompose the national income and understand the possible income composition of the digital product sector.The third is the design and application of the international input-output table embedded in national income.In the same way,the measurement method of the application difficulty of the input-output method is proposed.The solution to the first difficulty is to screen the digital product sector according to the concept and classification of digital trade.To solve the second difficulty,first of all,it should be clear that the cross-border outflow of digital products can create national income.Then continue to decompose the national income according to the types of enterprises and product sectors,and obtain the possible pure trade GIC income,investment trade GIC income and pure investment GIC income of digital product trade.The ratio of the national income generated by the digital product sector to the global total income is used to calculate the actual national income generated by the digital product trade.The key to solving the last difficulty is to decompose the added value of foreign enterprises.The added value of foreign enterprises is divided into labor income and capital income,of which labor income belongs to the host country and capital income belongs to the ownership country.Chapter four mainly uses the digital trade measurement framework,digital coefficient method and input-output method to realize the calculation of China’s ownership digital trade scale in 2020 and digital product trade income in 2016.In the process of measuring the scale of ownership digital trade,the scale of digital trade based on BOP and FATS is calculated respectively.In the calculation of trade income of digital products,the income generated by non-digital products trade is also calculated.The last chapter summarizes the main work of the research,and puts forward prospects for the further research and expansion of digital trade in the future.It is manifested in the expansion of the concept of digital trade,the refinement of statistical classification,the innovation of statistical methods,the design of survey system,the improvement of survey data,and the extension of statistical analysis,etc.In the digital trade rules,policy adjustment,digital regulation,digital governance,digital tax and other measures of digital trade,many aspects need to be further discussed.