Abstract:
With the profound changes in the international situation and the rapid development of digital technology, global digital economic and trade rules show some new trends, which are mainly manifested in the following respects. More and more emphasis is put on the interoperability of digital systems. There is an anti-liberalization trend in the field of cross-border data flow. Artificial intelligence has become the priority area for competition among major countries, and digital standards have become the key to global digital economic and trade governance. In recent years, China has continuously improved its digital economic and trade laws and regulations, and actively integrated itself into the global digital economic and trade governance system. However, China’s related digital trade ideas are basically embodied in the first generation of digital economic and trade rules, such as paperless trade and personal information protection, and its commitments to such core issues as cross-border data flow and source code protection are limited, resulting in a gap between China’s digital economic and trade rules and high-standard agreements, the lack of compatibility with relevant rules, and relatively low voice of China in global digital trade. In this regard, China should conform to the new trend of global digital economy and trade development, accelerate multilateral and bilateral digital economy and trade negotiations, and strengthen digital technology innovation. In addition, China also needs to speed up the formulation of priority issues, and improve the compatibility and interoperability of relevant rules to expand institutional opening-up and enhance the governance capacity of digital economy and trade.