The Research On The Impact Of Restrictions On Digital Service Trade On Chinese Digital Trade Export Potential

During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period,China’s digital trade has achieved leapfrog development,and the export competitiveness of digital trade has improved significantly,providing new opportunities for the high-quality development of China’s foreign trade.As an important part of digital trade,digital service trade will also promote the development of China’s foreign trade:the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia in 2020 had a significant impact on international trade,and the real economy was hit hard,among which the recovery of world trade was given a new impetus due to the characteristics and advantages of digital trade with online ordering and delivery.UNCTAD statistics show that in 2020 global services exports fell by 18%year-on-year,while digital services exports fell by only 1.8%year-on-year to $3.17 trillion.Digital service exports account for 63.6%of global service exports,an increase of 11.8 percentage points over 2019,which shows that in the context of the new crown epidemic,vigorous development of digital service trade has become a necessary and indispensable choice for global economic recovery.However,in recent years,due to the different levels of digital development and unbalanced digital trade among countries,many countries have introduced restrictive measures and policies on digital trade one after another in order to protect data security.On this basis,this paper investigates the impact of digital trade restrictions on China’s digital trade export potential and puts forward suggestions for adjusting the strength of digital trade restrictions at multiple levels and in all directions in China,as well as providing suggestions for developing supporting measures.This paper measures the extent of digital services trade restrictions in each country based on the Digital Services Trade Restriction Index(DSTRI)from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD)database as a proxy variable for the core explanatory variables in this paper.Firstly,the mechanism and path of the influence of digital services trade restrictions on China’s digital trade export potential are theoretically sorted out;secondly,74 countries from 2014-2021 are used as samples to estimate China’s export potential to other countries using stochastic frontier gravity model,and then they are empirically tested in terms of mediating effects and moderating effects.The results of this paper show that:first,digital services trade restrictions have a significant inhibitory effect on China’s digital trade export potential and trade costs play a masking effect;second,digital services trade restrictions in different policy areas have different degrees of impact on digital trade export potential;third,the improvement of information technology level and the progress of logistics development level help to weaken the export of digital services trade restrictions inhibiting effect.Based on the above research findings,this paper puts forward the following suggestions for China to adjust the strength of digital service trade restrictions and thus enhance China’s digital trade export potential:first,relax digital service trade restrictions and enhance the degree of digital service trade openness,second,improve digital trade supporting measures and enhance the level of digital infrastructure construction;third,actively carry out multilateral digital trade international cooperation and maintain the multilateral digital economy Fourth,pay attention to the differentiation of international markets and formulate targeted trade strategies;Fifth,focus on the study of international rules of digital trade to enhance the ability to anticipate and resist risks.