Research on the Impact of Digital Trade Rules on China’s Digital Service Export Sophistication

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-787-3_84How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Digital Trade Rules; Digital Service Export Sophistication; Regional Trade Agreements

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the accelerated restructuring of global digital trade rules and the high-quality development of China’s digital services trade, this paper selects 26 economies that have signed regional trade agreements with China containing digital trade provisions from 2012 to 2024 as research samples. Using balanced panel data, this study conducts a quantitative empirical analysis to systematically investigate the impact, transmission mechanisms, and heterogeneous characteristics of the depth of digital trade rules on the sophistication of China’s digital services exports. Regression estimates from this study show that deeper digital trade rules significantly raise the export sophistication of China’s digital services. This result is robust to alternative depth measures, to excluding special-year observations, and to winsorizing outliers. Heterogeneity analysis reveals the quality effect is strongest for e‑commerce, cross‑cutting, and digital IP provisions. Rule dividends significantly benefit lower‑income and middle‑income economies with weaker industrial bases, but turn insignificant for high‑income ones with mature regulatory systems. Mechanism tests confirm two mediating channels: lowering cross‑border information costs and improving partner countries’ regulatory governance quality. Based on the above empirical findings, three targeted policy recommendations are put forward: cut cross-border rule negotiation costs, optimize the cross-border institutional operation environment, and consolidate core industrial competitiveness.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Chengwen Kang
AU  - Rongqing Wang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/29
TI  - Research on the Impact of Digital Trade Rules on China’s Digital Service Export Sophistication
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 4th International Conference on Management Innovation and Economy Development (MIED 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 864
EP  - 874
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-787-3_84
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-787-3_84
ID  - Kang2026
ER  -