Research On International Competitiveness Of China’s Digital Trade

Since the beginning of the 21 st century,there have been constant breakthroughs in global digital technology,and the global internet penetration rate has been increasing year by year.The digital economy is thriving,and its penetration rate is constantly increasing,with its proportion in the Gross Domestic Product(GDP)of many countries rising year by year.The rapid development of the digital economy has led to the emergence of digital trade,which is a product of the continuous breakthroughs in global digital technology and the upgrading of traditional trade patterns.Although there is still no unified global standard for defining digital trade,there is a growing consensus that digital trade is closely linked to digital technology and relies on the internet as a carrier,with data transmission as the basic method.At the end of 2019,the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on global economic and trade exchanges.However,digital trade developed rapidly and performed well.The development of digital trade has attracted more and more attention from countries around the world,especially in terms of international competitiveness.The size of a country’s international competitiveness in digital trade directly determines its share in the global digital trade market and whether it can "stand firm" in the competition of the new round of technological revolution.Therefore,this article selects panel data from 2010 to 2020 of 24 major countries around the world,including China,the United States,Japan,and others.Based on this,and referring to existing literature,six primary indicators including digital infrastructure,economic development level,and ICT industry development level,as well as 10 secondary indicators such as telecom communication service level,network security and penetration rate,economic scale,and consumer ability,and 21 tertiary indicators such as mobile cellular wireless communication system phone rentals and fixed broadband internet users,are selected to construct the measurement framework for digital trade international competitiveness.Then,the principal component analysis method is used to calculate the digital trade international competitiveness index of 24 countries,and this is used as the dependent variable.In addition,seven indicators including fixed broadband internet users,per capita GDP,digital trade export volume,the percentage of high-tech exports to manufactured exports,patent applications,R&D personnel,and degree of openness are used as independent variables to conduct multiple linear regression analysis.The following conclusions are mainly drawn: through the calculation of the digital trade competitiveness of 24 countries,it was found that the United States has consistently ranked first in the world,while China’s digital trade international competitiveness has shown a rapid upward trend and ranked second in the world in 2020.Fixed broadband internet users,per capita GDP,digital trade export volume,the percentage of hightech exports to manufactured exports,patent applications,and R&D personnel have a positive promoting effect on improving a country’s digital trade competitiveness.Therefore,in order to further enhance China’s digital trade international competitiveness,several suggestions are proposed from both macro and micro perspectives.First,at the macro level,China needs to increase resource input in the field of digital technology,consolidate the construction of digital infrastructure,and further expand its share of the world digital trade market.At the micro level,companies should increase their investment in digital technology research and development,encourage digital innovation,cultivate personal digital skills,and enhance individual digital transformation awareness.