Research On The Impact Of Digital Service Trade Barriers On China’s Digital Service Exports

With the emerging of the digital economy,digital trade in services has become an important engine to promote the innovative development of international trade in services,and international trade in services is constantly developing in the direction of digital transformation.In this context,digital trade in services has become a new form of international trade in services,strengthening ties between countries around the world by optimising the production and delivery of services and reducing the cost of information exchange,becoming one of the main forms of cross-border trade in services at present.The boom in digital services trade has been accompanied by problems regarding data leakage and privacy infringement,which have led to higher regulatory requirements.Countries have successively introduced restrictive measures on digital services trade within their borders with barriers,such as restrictions on electronic payment transactions,restrictions on cross-border data flows and data localisation measures,which have caused serious negative impacts on the development of their digital services industry and digital foreign services trade.Therefore,it is necessary and urgent to study the impact of digital services trade barriers on China’s digital services exports at this time.This article first provides a systematic review of digital service trade and restrictions on digital service trade,clarifies the research foundation of this article,and clarifies the theoretical basis for the emergence of digital service trade barriers based on naive industry protection theory and new trade protectionism theory.This article finds that digital service trade barriers hinder the export of digital services by increasing their trade costs through the "cost effect",while the development of the Internet will to some extent reduce the decline in exports.Then,the development of digital service trade between China and major countries in the world was analyzed,and it was found that the scale of digital service trade in China is constantly increasing.Among other commercial service industries,telecommunications,computer,and information service industries are the two largest digital service exports in China;After analyzing the development of digital service trade barriers in China and major countries around the world,it was found that the level of digital service trade barriers in developing countries is much higher than that in developed countries.Secondly,based on the Panel data of 54 importing countries,this paper constructs a benchmark model to explore the impact of digital services trade barriers on China’s digital services exports,and conducts corresponding robustness tests and endogenous tests.It is found that digital services trade barriers of importing countries will significantly inhibit China’s digital services exports.In addition,according to the impact process of digital services trade barriers on digital services exports,we conducted the Mesomeric effect test of trade costs and the moderating effect test of the Internet development level,which confirmed the existence of the impact mechanism.Moreover,this article also conducted heterogeneity analysis from two perspectives: industry and policy.Firstly,it examined the heterogeneity impact of DSTRI on the six major industries of digital services in China.The results showed that digital service trade barriers had the greatest impact on China’s telecommunications,computer,and information service industries’ exports;Secondly,by exploring the heterogeneity impact of DSTRI levels in each of the five major policy areas on China’s digital service exports,it was found that policy restrictive measures in the field of infrastructure connectivity have the greatest impact on digital service exports.Finally,based on the above research content and conclusions,this article strives to propose effective countermeasures and suggestions for China to expand the scale of digital service exports.