Expo promotes an open world economy

The second Global Digital Trade Expo, slated to be held in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, from Nov 23 to 27, will serve to promote global cooperation in the digital economy and be an important initiative to support the building of an open world economy, senior officials said on 24th of Oct.

Delegates from more than 30 international organizations, including the World Trade Organization and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, will attend the expo, said Wang Shouwen, vice-minister of commerce, at a news conference in Beijing. Some 20 percent of the exhibitors are foreign firms, of which one-seventh are Fortune 500 enterprises, Wang said, adding that more than 800 buyers from around the world will participate to help exhibitors expand their presence in the international market.

In addition to offline activities, the online expo will be in place to realize more digitally empowered matchmaking through accurate profiling and intelligent searches, so as to enhance exhibitors' and buyers' sense of gain and satisfaction, Wang said.

This event pools together 50 big models from all over the world for the first time, covering large language models, large visual models, large biological models and multimodal foundation models, said Yao Gaoyuan, mayor of Hangzhou.

Since digital trade is a brand-new kind of commerce, its standards, regulations and governance still need to be improved to keep up with technological advancements, said Lu Shan, vice-governor of Zhejiang.

The expo will explore such issues as the mechanism for international cooperation on Silk Road e-commerce, the legal system for the digitization of trade and digital trade, and international governance of intellectual property rights in the digital economy, Lu said.

Digital trade, as a new trend in the development of modern international trade, will evolve into a new growth driver in the long run, said Wang, adding that digital trade is becoming an important force in restructuring China's production factors, optimizing its foreign trade structure and shaping new development advantages.

In 2022, China's digitally deliverable trade in services rose by 7.8 percent year-on-year to 2.51 trillion yuan ($343 billion), ranking fifth worldwide. Meanwhile, the country's imports and exports via cross-border e-commerce hit 2.11 trillion yuan, a new high, increasing 9.8 percent over the previous year, said the Ministry of Commerce.

China is becoming more capable of carrying out homegrown innovation in cutting-edge technologies that facilitate digital trade, Wang said, citing the Global Innovation Index, released by the World Intellectual Property Organization last year, where China moved up to 11th place.