Study On The Influence Of Digital Service Trade Barriers On The Export Sophistication Of China’s Manufacturing Industry

In order to cope with the demographic dividend,labor cost and other difficulties,and enhance China’s position in the global value chain,the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry is of great importance to China.Digitalization and servitization are two important ways for manufacturing industry to improve the export sophistication and upgrade export products.The deep integration of digital service and manufacturing industry can promote the improvement of the production efficiency of Chinese manufacturing industry.At the same time,the introduction of high-quality technical products can also form technology spillover,promote the improvement of the innovation ability of Chinese manufacturing industry,so as to enhance the export sophistication of China’s manufacturing industry.However,among the world,lots of countries impose barriers to limit cross-border data flow,in order to protect privacy and their own digital services.The existence of digital service trade barrier restrains the role of digital service in upgrading and reforming our manufacturing industry and hinders the improvement of the export sophistication of our manufacturing industry.Therefore,this paper combines theory with demonstration to study the influence of digital service trade barriers on the export sophistication of China’s manufacturing industry.This article first through the situation analysis,found out that in our country,the digital services trade become the main path to promote manufacturing industry transformation and upgrading.However,at the same time,restrictive measures for global trade in digital services are emerging in an endless stream,multilateral mechanisms for trade in digital services have become an important platform for formulating rules for trade in digital services,and cross-border data flow is a key area of concern for all countries.On the whole,there is no unified global rules for trade in digital services.According to the digital service trade restrictive index released by OECD,restrictive measures of digital service trade show a trend of strengthening on the whole,and the restrictive index of digital service trade in developing countries is significantly higher than that in developed countries.At the same time,this paper analyzes the export sophistication of our manufacturing industry.On the whole,the export sophistication of our manufacturing industry still has great room for improvement.Dividing sub-sectors into labor-intensive,capital-intensive and technology-intensive ones by factor intensity,it is found that export sophistication of technology-intensive manufacturing industry is obviously better than that of capital-intensive manufacturing industry.Meanwhile,the export sophistication of capital intensive manufacturing industry is significantly higher than that of labor intensive manufacturing industry.Secondly,this paper uses the two-way fixed model to empirically test the influence of digital service trade barriers on the export sophistication of China’s manufacturing industry.The regression results show that digital service trade barriers have a significant inhibitory effect on the export technical sophistication.The digital service trade barrier has a significant negative impact on the capital-intensive and technology-intensive manufacturing industry and exerts a stronger inhibitory effect on the technology-intensive manufacturing industry.However,the regression of digital service trade barriers to the export sophistication of labor-intensive manufacturing industry is not significant.From the perspective of national heterogeneity,digital service barriers in developed countries have a significant inhibitory effect on the export sophistication of China’s manufacturing industry,but the digital service barriers in developing countries have no significant effect.Further analysis shows that digital service trade barriers significantly hinder the improvement of export sophistication of China’s manufacturing industry through the intermediary effect of innovation capability.Finally,based on the research results,this paper puts forward targeted policy suggestions from three aspects: active participation in the multilateral negotiations on digital service restrictive rules,comprehensive improvement of digital service trade business environment quality,and establishment of early warning mechanism of digital service trade barriers.