| At present,with the global industrial focus shifting from manufacturing to service industry,improving the quality and efficiency of service export trade is the key to achieving high-quality economic development.In the era of digital economy,the new generation of information and communication technologies represented by the Internet,cloud computing and artificial intelligence have accelerated their penetration into the service industry and enabled the transformation of the traditional service industry,making the service industry present a new trend of digitalization,networking and intelligence,which not only improves the efficiency of service trade activities,but also enriches the content of cross-border service trade.Enabling remote or storable trade of many service activities that previously required in-person transactions or could not be stored.Therefore,the service trade activities under the digital development constitute an important part of the digital trade.At the same time,as a rule-intensive trade form,the transformation of service trade’s driving force,content and mode brought about by digital technology penetration also promotes the extension of traditional rules affecting the development of service trade to digital trade rules.As an institutional guarantee to release the vitality of digital economy,digital trade policies and rules are becoming an important condition to promote the competitiveness of service export trade under the background of digital development of service industry.Limited by the conceptual definition of digital trade and the global digital trade governance system,no agreement has been reached under the multilateral framework.The digital trade regulatory policies of different countries and the digital trade provisions of different regional trade agreements show obvious fragmentation characteristics.As a result,the current domestic and foreign researches on digital trade policy rules and service trade are relatively independent and scattered.Most studies on digital trade policy rules remain in the single-level measurement of a country’s digital trade openness or the qualitative analysis from a single perspective of the trade effects of digital trade policy rules.A unified analysis framework has not been established yet to examine the influence of domestic digital trade restriction policies and the regulatory integration effect of digital trade rules in regional trade agreements.In particular,the existing literature does not seek an effective way to link digital trade policies to the service industry level,so as to reflect the differences in the influence of digital trade policies on trade activities of different digital service industries.Therefore,this paper firstly constructs the evaluation system of a country’s digital trade policy openness from the perspectives of the restrictive degree of domestic digital trade regulatory policies and the coverage level of digital trade rules in regional trade agreements.Secondly,based on the typical characteristics of digital economy penetration promoting the digital development of service industry,the digitalization level of service industry under input-output method is obtained by using the classification of core industries of digital economy and medium and high digitalintensity sectors,and the effective penetration of digital trade policies in service industry is reflected accordingly.Furthermore,based on the progressive perspective,this paper elaborates theoretically and empirically the effect and mechanism of domestic digital trade restriction policies on the multi-dimensional service export competitiveness,such as the scale of service export trade,the net technical content of service export and the GVC position of service industry,and effectively tests the regulatory integration effect of digital trade rules in regional trade agreements.Finally,it puts forward some relevant policy suggestions on the reform of Chinese digital trade regulation and participation in the construction of global digital trade rules in order to enhance the international competitiveness of service trade.This paper follows the main logical idea of "theoretical elaboration→fact description→empirical analysis→countermeasure research",and the research content is divided into 8 chapters.The first chapter introduces the background,purpose,significance,ideas,methods and innovations of this research.Chapter 2 is a summary and review of relevant literature.Chapter 3,based on the definition of core concepts and the framework of logical thinking,analyzes the theoretical model and mechanism of the influence of digital trade restriction policies on the multidimensional service export competitiveness and analyzes the regulatory integration effect of RTA digital trade rules.In Chapter 4,core indicators such as the restrictive degree of domestic regulatory policies of digital trade,the depth and breadth of RTA digital trade rules,the digitalization level of service industry and the service export competitiveness level of multi-dimensional are measured and analyzed with typical facts.Chapter 5,Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 empirically analyze the effects of digital trade restriction policies on service export trade,service export technology content and service industry’s GVC position.And the influence channels of trade cost effect and digital divide effect under the influence dimension of service export trade,the influence paths of resource allocation effect and R&D innovation effect under the influence dimension of technology content of service export,and the mechanism of human capital structure effect and technology content effect of imported products under the influence dimension of GVC position of service industry.And expand and test the regulatory integration effect of RTA digital trade rules under the effect of domestic restrictive regulatory policies constituting trade barriers.The main findings of this paper are as follows:First,the theoretical model shows that the restrictive policies and measures of digital trade are not conducive to the growth of service export trade and the promotion of technological content of service export and division of labor in the global value chain of service industry.Logical analysis shows that signing RTA digital trade rules with foreign countries and improving the depth and breadth of provisions can weaken the negative impact of domestic barrier policies on service export competitiveness,showing a significant regulatory integration effect.Second,according to the calculation of core indicators,developed countries in Europe and America have a lower level of digital trade regulatory policy barriers and a higher level of coverage of RTA digital trade rules.Chinese domestic digital trade regulatory policy has the highest degree of restriction,and there is an obvious gap between the coverage level of RTA digital trade rules signed by China and that of developed countries in Europe and America.The digitization level of service industry is different among industries,and the digitization level of service industry in developed countries is obviously higher than that in developing countries.In terms of service export competitiveness,developed countries have obvious advantages in the scale of value-added service export,the technical complexity of value-added export and the GVC position.Chinese service export competitiveness in all dimensions remains at the middle and lower reaches of the world.Third,the digital trade restriction policies have hindered the growth of a country’s foreign service export trade,among which the bilateral trade cost effect and the bilateral digital divide effect are the important influence channels.Heterogeneity analysis shows that restrictive policies in payment systems and infrastructure connectivity play a relatively large role in barriers.The negative impact of restrictive policies on service export trade in developed economies is obviously stronger than that in developing economies,and the negative impact on other business services,financial services and information and communication services is more significant.Extended analysis shows that,the heterogeneity of bilateral digital trade restrictive regulatory policies also constitutes an important service trade barrier,and the bilateral institutional distance further enhances the trade inhibition effect of digital trade restrictive policies.However,when trading partners sign RTA covering digital trade rules and improve the depth or breadth of its provisions,they can significantly weaken the trade barrier effect of domestic digital trade restriction policies and policy differences,and produce significant regulatory integration effect.Moreover,the improvement of the depth level of data-related provisions has a strong regulatory integration effect.Fourth,the digital trade restriction policies are not conducive to the improvement of the technical complexity of a country’s service export and the GVC position of service industry,and shows significant differences in the influence of policy areas,industry types and country types.Among them,resource allocation effect and R&D innovation effect,human capital structure effect and import technology content effect are the important channels that digital trade restrictive policies and measures negatively affect the technological complexity of service export and the GVC position.At the same time,the overall degree of differentiation of restrictive policies and measures of digital trade also constitutes an important restriction factor for the enhancement of technological complexity of a country’s service export and the GVC position of the service industry.Meanwhile,the improvement of the national digital infrastructure level helps to release the vitality of the digital economy and alleviate the negative impact of domestic regulatory policy barriers.Among them,the enhancement of the application ability of information communication technology has a more significant positive moderating effect.In addition,actively signing RTA covering digital trade rules and improving the coverage level of provisions have significant regulatory integration effect,which can break through domestic restrictive regulatory policy barriers and achieve the purpose of improving the technical content of service ports and the GVC position of service industries.Moreover,the depth level of data-related provisions and trade promotion provisions has stronger regulation integration effect respectively.This paper provides a new perspective for the research on the penetration of digital trade policies into the economic and trade activities of the service industry,and enricicates and clarifies the different effects of domestic digital trade restrictive policies and RTA digital trade rules on the economic and trade activities of the service industry.It provides effective empirical evidence and policy reference for China to further reform the domestic digital trade regulation policies and actively participate in the construction of regional digital trade rules so as to enhance the international competitiveness of service export. |
