The Impact Of Digital Trade Rules On Digital Service Exports In Regional Trade Agreements

The trend of the service-oriented economy and the transformation of digital technology has pushed the world into a phase of "digital promote trade".As an important part of digital trade,digital service trade is becoming more and more important in international trade.However,when the development of digital service trade is in full swing,the corresponding system of trade rules in international trade has not been completely established.The digital trade provisions explored by various countries focus on their own interest,and the construction of multilateral digital trade rules led by WTO is progressing slowly.Each country in the world is committed to building global normative digital trade rules.At this time,the signing of digital trade-related rules in bilateral or multilateral regional trade agreements provides a good way for countries to standardize the international digital service trade transaction process,and coordinate the interest of various parties with different development levels of digital economy.Therefore,this paper adopts qualitative and quantitative research methods to expand the trade gravity model to the field of digital service trade.Based on the WTO Trade agreement database,UNCTAD database and TAPED database,this paper uses the Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimation method to analyze the results,channels and regulatory effects of the signing of digital trade rules on the export of digital services in regional trade agreements.The results show that:(1)The number of regional trade agreements with special chapters on e-commerce continues to increase and the importance of digital trade rules in regional trade agreements is growing rapidly.Among the major digital trade rule templates,"American template" has the deepest digital trade rules.(2)Among the global digital service exports,developed countries lead the development of the world digital service trade due to their large scale and fast development speed.China is the world’s seventh-largest exporter of digital services.(3)The signing of digital trade rules in regional trade agreements,as well as the improvement of their breadth and depth,will significantly promote the export of digital services.This promotion is heterogeneous in terms of different levels of economic development in different countries,different types of trade rules and different sectors of digital services trade.And digital trade rules mainly promote the export of digital services by promoting the intensive margin of digital service trade.(4)The Internet penetration rate and regulatory quality of exporting countries have a moderating effect on the influence of digital trade rules in promoting the export of digital services.Based on the above research,the article suggests that China needs to attach great importance to the formulation of digital trade rules,promote the construction of high-standard digital trade rules,and constantly improve the breadth and depth of digital provisions.In order to build a "Chinese model" of digital trade rules in line with China’s national conditions,China should strengthen the construction of domestic digital infrastructure and relevant rules,and seek international consensus.In addition,China should actively participate in regional trade agreement negotiations and join the high-level regional trade agreements that have entered into force,so as to enhance China’s voice and initiative in the formulation of global digital trade rules.