China has potential to take the lead in global digital trade, says former commerce vice-minister

China should further opening-up, improve its innovation ability and strengthen international cooperation to take the lead in global digital trade, said Wei Jianguo, China's former vice-minister of commerce, at the 2024 Global Digital Trade Conference recently held in Wuhan, Hubei province.

"China's share of digital trade is relatively low in the international market. In order to expand the market share, China must take the initiative to align with the high-level international economic and trade rules, especially the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA)," said Wei.

"We must introduce the provisions on liberalization of trade in digital products and services of countries and regions like Europe, the United States, Japan, and South Korea as soon as possible and accelerate institutional opening-up, with regards to rules, regulations, management and standards, to establish a unified national digital trade market," he continues.

In addition, by deepening its opening-up, China will not only activate the domestic consumer market but also enhance the quality of the development of the services industry, Wei added.

"We need to step up innovation and launch more public products for digital trade to the world to increase China's presence in international digital trade," Wei said. "Now is the best time for China to strengthen international cooperation in the digital economy."

China needs to actively participate in the formulation of international rules and regulations and join the DEPA as soon as possible. The Digital Silk Road can be upgraded through digital trade. Thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises in China, through the e-commerce platform, can have direct access to the international market, at the same time, China's large-scale market attracts products from other regions to enter, he added.

In 2020, China's digital trade was 4 trillion yuan ($552.376 billion), with a year-on-year growth of 9.3 percent, accounting for 38.6 percent of GDP. It is expected that the digital economy will reach 60 trillion yuan in 2025, accounting for more than 50 percent of GDP. The above shows that China's digital trade has huge development potential, and will surely become the engine of global economic development in the next five years, Wei said.

In the first half of this year, cross-border e-commerce has reached 1.2 trillion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 10.5 percent. It was 4.4 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate of China's foreign trade in the same period. From 1.06 trillion yuan in 2018 to 2.38 trillion yuan in 2023, China's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports have increased by 1.2 times in five years, according to the General Administration of Customs.

"China's digital trade will grow fast in the next five years, to not only drive the development of the entire Chinese digital economy but will also contribute to the fourth industrial revolution," Wei said.

Tan Guoling contributed to the story