China News Service, Hangzhou, September 27 (Xi Jinyan) From September 23 to 27, the 5th Global Digital Trade Expo (referred to as the "Digital Trade Expo") was held as scheduled in Hangzhou, Zhejiang.
This event continues to release the "magnet effect": the China headquarters of the Arab Digital Economic Alliance has settled in Hangzhou, the Kenya (China) International Investment Cooperation Center has settled in the "Belt and Road" China-Africa Cooperation Industrial Park, and the Google (Hangzhou) Cross-border E-commerce Acceleration Center has officially opened... A series of cooperation results have been intensively implemented, confirming the profound changes in the global economic and trade pattern in the digital era.
Currently, as the digital wave iterates and accelerates, why are more and more countries and multinational companies coming to China? The answer lies in the three words "together" - sharing opportunities, discussing rules and building a future together.
Build a “digital ladder” to share the great opportunities in the Chinese market
Currently, global trade is accelerating digital transformation. The latest report shows that global digital trade exports will reach US$7.75 trillion in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 7.1%, outperforming the overall growth rate of global trade for many consecutive years.
It can be said that digital trade has become a new trend and new growth point in the development of international trade. At the same time, artificial intelligence is accelerating the reconstruction of the entire trade chain.
In the "Silk Road E-commerce" exhibition area of this digital trade fair, Alibaba and many other cross-border e-commerce companies demonstrated digital tools used in intelligent translation, intelligent customer service, intelligent product selection and other aspects, which can reduce information asymmetry and transaction costs in cross-border trade from the entire link.
Today, in Yiwu, nearly 30,000 merchants use various AI tools on a regular basis, and orders from merchants that use AI tools extensively have increased by more than 20%. These new overseas tools were born out of the ecological soil and massive application scenarios of China’s huge market.
While lowering the threshold for digital trade, this digital trade fair has for the first time set up an exclusive exhibition area for the future of token AI, focusing on displaying the full-chain service model of token generation, distribution, invocation and application, allowing small and medium-sized enterprises in developing countries to purchase token services on demand and obtain large model capabilities at low cost without investing huge sums of money in building computing power clusters.
From underlying computing power to data models, these new technologies and platforms have attracted great attention from overseas merchants. As the guest country of this year’s digital trade fair, Malaysia has organized a number of companies in the field of artificial intelligence to participate in the exhibition to experience the trend of cutting-edge technology.
"Digital technology should benefit the people and small and medium-sized merchants. We hope to continue to explore and build a healthy synergistic relationship with China." Datuk Indira Abu Bakar, Director of the Malaysian External Trade Development Council, said in an interview that China's technological development dividends can help Malaysia improve people's livelihood and achieve economic quality and efficiency improvement.
This is a microcosm. China's technological development such as artificial intelligence adheres to the open source and open approach, building a "digital ladder" that all countries can climb.
When Yiwu merchants' AI tools generate the first multilingual greetings, and when Kuala Lumpur's small and medium-sized enterprises access large models through word element calls, China not only brings a huge market, but also builds a low-threshold channel for small and medium-sized entities around the world to participate in global digital trade.
Gather global wisdom to discuss new rules for digital trade
The boom in digital trade has brought new impetus and opportunities. Along with this, some problems and challenges such as new development differentiation, new economic and trade barriers, and new lack of rules have become more prominent and complex.
A typical scenario is: an overseas buyer places an order on a cross-border platform. The order may be placed by his AI assistant, the contract is signed with an electronic signature, and the payment is made through a cross-border payment channel. If a dispute occurs, it may be heard online by a local Internet court. The entire link is highly digitalized and intelligent, but the laws and rules behind it are always unclear.
Xiao Yongping, senior professor and dean of the Institute of International Rule of Law at Wuhan University, said that in this process, in whose name the agent is, whether the contract is established, whether the data can be exported abroad, what mechanism is used to resolve disputes, and which country's laws apply? There is no unified conclusion on these issues.
Promoting the unification of global digital trade rules and interoperability of standards is also one of the core issues focused on by previous digital trade conferences.
The Digital Trade Rule of Law Forum has been held for five consecutive years, continuing to build a multilateral rules dialogue mechanism, and bringing together representatives from authoritative international institutions such as the United Nations Conference on International Trade Law, the International Court of Mediation, and the United Nations Geographic Information Knowledge and Innovation Center.
Luo Yucheng (Chinese name), Legal Affairs Officer of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, told reporters, "UNCITRAL has been collecting practices or ideas and suggestions on legislation from different countries and regions, and China is a very important country in the field of digital trade. In terms of quantity and scale, China's practice is very contributing to the work of UNCITRAL."
Luo Yucheng said that cross-border digital trade disputes are large in number, small in value, and the parties are scattered in different countries. Chinese courts, mediation institutions, and platforms each perform their duties and "resolve disputes" in "co-governance." Such models and concepts are worth learning from and promoting.
It is reported that this year’s forum relies on UNCITRAL, the European Legal Institute (ELI) and other institutions to directly benchmark Chinese judicial cases with the DEA (Digital Economy Agreement), model law and other international rule-making processes, and promote the governance of digital trade disputes from issues to consensus, from consensus to practice, and from practice to rules.
The relevant person in charge of the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Commerce said that the formation of rules will not be achieved overnight, but every multilateral dialogue is turning differences into consensus. The global wisdom gathered at the Digital Trade Conference every year is making the rules of digital trade clearer and more predictable.
Bridging the digital divide and exploring a new future for the digital industry
In a new round of global trade and digital technology, more and more countries regard the Chinese market as an important strategic fulcrum, actively connect with China's digital industry ecology, and deeply embed themselves in the global digital trade chain.
During this digital trade fair, the China headquarters of the Arab Digital Economic Alliance officially landed in Hangzhou, and 7 cooperation results covering industrial projects and funds were simultaneously launched.
Why are Arab countries increasing cooperation with China? Aina Tangen, a senior researcher at the International Governance Innovation Center, believes that Arab countries have abundant capital, but lack a complete industrial ecology and implementation scenarios in frontier tracks such as artificial intelligence. China's open and inclusive cooperation model and mature digital industry chain system are the core attractions.
It is reported that the Arab Digital Economy Alliance has positioned its China headquarters as a "sustainable institutional bridge" and will set up a permanent team of about 20 people in Hangzhou in the future to regularly bring Arab purchasers to Hangzhou for roadshows and also bring Hangzhou companies to Afghanistan to discuss orders.
Give a man a fish and teach him how to fish. This digital trade fair not only focuses on project signing and resource docking, but also focuses on long-term cooperation and talent cultivation to consolidate the foundation of global digital cooperation.
This digital trade fair will simultaneously hold activities such as "Digital Trade Africa Day" and "Silk Road E-Commerce Day", and launch special plans for "AI+" talent training in special economic zones and "brain-computer fusion" young scientist cooperation for BRICS countries, Silk Road co-building countries, and African countries, in order to continue to cultivate an international digital talent team.
"Talent is an important support for promoting the inclusive development of artificial intelligence technology." Galina Mikhailova, an industrial development expert at the Department of Digital Transformation and Artificial Intelligence of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, believes that the core of the long-term development of digital trade lies in technological iteration and the key to talent cultivation.
From technology sharing to talent cultivation to ecological co-construction, using this digital trade fair as a window, a picture becomes clearer: when coffee beans from Nairobi arrive at the dining tables of Chinese people along the Digital Silk Road, and when the unified digital market of 22 Arab countries opens its doors to Chinese companies - global trade flows are undergoing profound adjustments, and China, with its open attitude and pragmatic actions, has become a key party connecting countries and sharing growth.
