Research On Digital Economy And High-quality Development Of China’s Export Trade

Since the 18 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,the digital economy has been given great importance and has been elevated to a national strategy.Especially after the implementation of a series of specific construction measures such as the “Network Power Strategy” and “National Big Data Strategy”,the development of the digital economy has achieved remarkable results,and the process of digital industrialization and industrial digitization has been significantly accelerated.While profoundly changing production and lifestyle,the digital economy has not only become a driving force for a new round of global industrial transformation,but also an important factor in reconstructing the world economic pattern.It is manifested that with the rapid development of the digital economy,the content and form of globalization have undergone tremendous changes,and the flow of data has become a new feature of globalization in the new era.It can be seen that the development of the digital economy can cultivate new advantages in export trade,expand the depth and breadth of international trade,and create new opportunities and conditions for the high-quality development of my country’s export trade.This paper follows the general idea of “problem raising-literature review-theoretical derivation-empirical test-policy suggestion” to build a research context,and comprehensively use the theories of international trade,development economics,regional economics and other disciplines to discuss.In terms of research content,this paper focuses on four aspects: growth characteristics,technical characteristics,quality characteristics,and green characteristics of the high-quality development of export trade,respectively,to analyze the effect and impact mechanism of the digital economy,and based on this,it proposes how to use the digital economy to promote exports.The main contents and conclusions of the policy recommendations for the high-quality development of trade are as follows.Firstly,based on policy evolution and temporal and spatial characteristics,it first summarizes the relevant policies of China’s digital economy development from three aspects: national strategy,five-year plan and relevant departments of the State Council,providing a new perspective for a comprehensive understanding of the development process of my country’s digital economy.Secondly,it summarizes and compares two types of representative methods for measuring the digital economy in the existing research,namely,the added value method and the index system evaluation method.On this basis,a digital economy development index system with 5 first-level indicators and 18 second-level indicators is constructed,and the digital economy development index of each province and the eastern,central and western regions is measured.Finally,this paper comprehensively analyzes the temporal and spatial characteristics of China’s digital economy development from four aspects: time evolution,spatial distribution,spatial differences and spatial agglomeration.The study finds that the overall level of China’s digital economy development has steadily increased from 2011 to 2020,with the highest in the east and the middle in the middle.,The lowest gradient spatial pattern characteristics in the west.There are significant differences between provinces and regions.Among them,the development level of digital economy in five provinces,including Beijing,Shanghai,Jiangsu,Guangdong and Zhejiang,is the leader in the development of digital economy in China.Guizhou,Beijing,Guangdong,Shanghai,Jiangsu and Zhejiang have the fastest growth rate.And China has gradually formed a digital economy development cluster highland in the Yangtze River Delta with Shanghai,Zhejiang and Jiangsu as the core,and a Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei digital economy development cluster area with Beijing as the core.Secondly,based on the growth characteristics of export trade,this paper discusses the impact of digital economy on the probability and scale of China’s export trade by using the export binary marginal theory.The results show that the digital economy has a significant role in promoting the growth of the total effect of exports,which is mainly reflected in the export expansion margin,but it has a restraining effect on the export intensity margin.The empirical test that distinguishes regional heterogeneity,country heterogeneity and product heterogeneity finds that the impact of digital economy on the dual marginal of exports is more significant in sub samples such as coastal areas,developing countries and non technology intensive products.Based on the further discussion of the regulatory effect,it is found that foreign direct investment,infrastructure and innovation ability have played a significant regulatory role in the impact of the digital economy on export trade,which is mainly reflected in the export intensive margin,and the impact on the export expansion margin is relatively weak.Thirdly,based on the technical characteristics of export trade,combined with the product trade data of China customs database,and on the basis of calculating the export technology complexity of each city,this paper empirically tests the impact of the improvement of digital economy on the urban export technology complexity.The results show that digital economy has a significant role in promoting the complexity of export technology.Digital economy is an important driving force for the technological progress of export trade,but there are differences due to the heterogeneity of regions,cities and industries.This result means that for Chinese cities,promoting the improvement of digital economy is conducive to the transformation and upgrading of export trade,especially for the technological progress of the export sector.In addition,special attention is paid to the intermediary role and spatial spillover role of urban innovation ability in the process of digital economy affecting export technological complexity.The study finds that the improvement of innovation ability is not only an important intermediary variable of digital economy affecting urban export complexity,but also has a strong spatial spillover role.Fourthly,based on the quality characteristics of export trade,the impact of the digital economy on the quality of export products is theoretically demonstrated,and then based on the "enterprise-product" level micro-data obtained from the combination of China’s customs database and China’s industrial enterprise database.The extrapolation method measures the quality of the export products of the enterprise,and combines with the digital economy development level of the city where the export enterprise is located,and conducts an empirical test by constructing an econometric model.The empirical results are consistent with the conclusion obtained by mathematical deduction,that is,the digital economy is an important factor promoting the quality improvement of China’s export products.Further testing based on the mediation effect model found that the digital economy can improve the quality of export products by reducing production costs,increasing total factor productivity,and promoting market concentration.Fifthly,based on the green characteristics of export trade,combined with the regional input-output table,the discrete data of China’s provincial industrial level export trade implied carbon are calculated,and a model is built to study the impact of the development of digital economy on the low-carbon growth of export trade.The development of digital economy can significantly reduce the implied carbon scale in export trade,which is conducive to promoting the low-carbon green development of export trade.In addition,it discusses the impact mechanism of the development of digital economy on the implicit carbon decline in export trade.This paper focuses on the conduction role of energy intensity,patent applications and innovation efficiency in the process of digital economy affecting the implicit carbon of export trade.It is found that the development of digital economy not only improves the scale of innovation,but also improves the efficiency of innovation,which plays a positive role in promoting the reduction of the implicit carbon of export trade.Finally,based on the conclusion of this paper,combined with the development characteristics of China in the two aspects of digital economy and export trade,this paper mainly puts forward specific policy suggestions from six aspects: accelerating the construction of digital infrastructure,enhancing the ability of digital technology innovation,strengthening the training of digital talents,improving the market operation mechanism of digital economy,improving the government’s ability of digital governance and risk prevention,aiming at the “high-quality development of export trade” with the “digital economy”,and in order to better promote the release of the positive effects of digital economy on the high-quality development of export trade.