Research On WTO’s Issues Of Digital Trade Negotiations And China’s Countermeasures

The increasing level of information technology promotes the continuous development of digital economy and provides new technical means for traditional trade.The World Trade Organization(WTO)started to negotiation about digital trade in 1998.China,the United States,the European Union,Japan and other major members have gradually clarified their negotiating positions and priorities.But China is still in a passive defensive position in negotiations on key issues.How to make China actively participate in the multilateral negotiations and strive for the leading role in the formulation of international digital trade rules is a key issue that should be paid attention to at present.In combination with the public proposals of major member countries in WTO negotiations and the development status of digital trade,this paper analyzes the basic positions of developed countries such as Europe and the United States on key issues and the behavior logic behind them.Finally,it makes theoretical analysis on the negotiation countermeasures of key issues such as cross-border data flow and taxation of digital products.Specifically,this paper is divided into five parts:The first part defines the basic concept of digital trade,briefly introducing the evolution process of it,and introduces the objective situation of the mixed use of the concepts of "digital trade" and "electronic commerce" in WTO.On this basis,this part introduces the overall situation of the development of digital trade in the world and China,the United States,the European Union and other major WTO members.The second part introduces the current framework represented by GATS and GATT,and analyzes why it can not adapt to the development of today’s digital trade.On this basis,the paper introduces the background and the latest development of WTO e-commerce negotiation,and the significance of the negotiation to the construction of current international rules of digital trade.The third part mainly discusses the key issues of current electronic commerce.Integrate the proposal from the three aspects of cross-border data flow,source code disclosure and taxation of digital products,and summarize the basic positions of each party on this basis.The fourth part starts with the proposals of European and American member states on key issues and combines the actual situation of their respective digital trade development to summarize and analyze the behavioral logic behind the relatively stable digital trade proposals of European and American developed countries,laying a foundation for China to deal with e-commerce negotiations.The fifth part mainly discusses the characteristics of the proposals in the WTO e-commerce negotiations,and points out the shortcomings of China’s response to key issues..Combining with the practices of developed countries and the characteristics of China,it gives some suggestions about WTO e-commerce negotiations.