International Competition & Industry Safety
LI Guanghui, ZHENG Yayuan, LIU Xinwen
Since China began the construction of the “Digital Silk Road”, significant achievements have been made in areas such as digital technology cooperation, digital infrastructure construction, digital service trade, and cross-border e-commerce with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) partner countries. Digital service trade has become a new growth point for economic and trade cooperation between China and BRI partner countries. Based on the background of “Silk Road E-commerce” cooperation, this paper takes 57 BRI partner countries from 2005 to 2023 as samples, employs a stochastic frontier gravity model to analyze the efficiency and potential of China′s digital service trade exports to these countries, and divides market types based on the calculated mean efficiency value to further explore the regional heterogeneity of digital service trade. This paper finds that factors such as the respective economic scale of China and these countries and a common language between them are conducive to China′s digital service trade exports, while factors such as population size and geographical distance hinder such exports. Factors such as “Silk Road E-commerce” cooperation, internet penetration rate, government efficiency, economic freedom, and the signing of free trade agreements with China can effectively reduce the impact of trade inefficiency, while foreign direct investment is not a major factor affecting the efficiency of digital service trade exports. Overall, China′s digital service trade exports to BRI partner countries exhibit relatively high efficiency and great potential. Specifically, efficiency is higher in countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia, and lower in countries such as Timor-Leste, Nepal, and Laos. In terms of the trend of export potential changes, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and West Asia regions will be the two regions with the greatest potential for China′s digital service trade exports, while the growth of the potential for China′s digital service trade exports to Central Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and other regions is relatively slow. Based on these findings, this paper proposes countermeasures and suggestions such as continuously deepening “Silk Road E-commerce” cooperation, expanding institutional opening up in digital trade, improving government service efficiency, and innovating digital trade cooperation methods, in order to continuously release the digital trade dividends under the international cooperation framework of “Silk Road E-commerce”.