Perspective from Hangzhou on China's Ambitions in Digital Trade: The 5th Global Digital Trade Expo to be Held

The 5th Global Digital Trade Expo will be held from September 23 to 27,2026, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Li Qiang, Premier of the State Council of China, will attend the opening ceremony and related events, delivering a speech. This announcement was officially made by He Yadong, spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce of China, on September 21, and was promptly disseminated worldwide through official channels, including Xinhua News Agency.

This year’s expo, themed “Embracing the AI Future at the Digital Trade Expo,” covers an exhibition area of 170,000 square meters. It focuses on five key areas of digital trade, features eight dedicated exhibition zones, and brings together global digital trade platforms such as Alibaba, Google, and Amazon, along with over 200 large AI models including Tongyi Qianwen and DeepSeek, all showcased together. Malaysia and Hungary serve as guest countries, and the number of overseas delegations exceeds the total of all previous editions. The event has attracted nearly 40,000 professional trade participants, including over 12,000 international trade participants.

To date, this edition of the Digital Trade Fair has established partnerships with 136 overseas chambers of commerce and trade associations. At the event, over 1,300 trade matchmaking activities will be organized, and for the first time, an “AI Assistant” will be launched to provide intelligent services, including business opportunity matching. For global participants in digital trade, this event represents an annual gathering of significantly enhanced scale and sophistication, underscoring Hangzhou’s further consolidation as a global digital trade hub.

From a national strategic perspective, China’s emphasis on digital trade has not emerged recently, but has instead evolved through a continuous and deepening policy process. Since its inaugural edition in 2022, the Global Digital Trade Expo has been successfully held four times, attracting over 5,000 domestic and foreign enterprises, 87,000 professional trade visitors, and 627,000 attendees, with over 1,200 inaugural exhibitions, launches, and displays. Over the past five years, the expo has progressed from establishing a dialogue framework, to aggregating 50 major artificial intelligence models globally, and now to advancing embodied intelligence from concept to practice. This iterative evolution of the expo’s content reflects the rapid maturation of China’s digital trade industrial ecosystem.

According to the data, in 2025, China’s total import and export volume of digital services reached US$410.84 billion, with net digital service exports expanding from US$26.9 billion in 2021 to US$79.2 billion—a nearly twofold increase over five years. The total import and export volume of cross-border e-commerce amounted to approximately CNY 2.84 trillion, ranking first globally for the fifth consecutive year. Behind these figures lies China’s systematic strategic layout to position digital trade as a new engine for high-quality development of its foreign trade. In August 2024, the General Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council jointly issued the “Opinions on Reform, Innovation, and Development of Digital Trade,” explicitly setting targets: by 2029, the share of digitally delivered service trade in total service trade should rise to over 45%, and by 2035, this share should exceed 50%. This signifies that digital trade has evolved from sector-specific promotional policies to a national strategic agenda, endowed with clear quantitative objectives and a defined timetable.

Underpinning the realization of these objectives is a institutional safeguard framework that is rapidly taking shape and actively aligning with international rules. In 2025, the revised Foreign Trade Law will, for the first time, include a dedicated chapter on “digital trade,” thereby addressing the long-standing lack of foundational legislation in this domain. Simultaneously, a series of regulations—including the “Measures for Security Assessment of Cross-Border Data Transfer,” the “Provisions on Promoting and Regulating Cross-Border Data Flows,” and the “Measures for Certification of Personal Information Cross-Border Transfer” —have been successively promulgated, establishing a comprehensive compliance framework that encompasses three key pathways: security assessment for cross-border data transfer, standardized contracts, and protection certification.

Notably, this institutional design is not closed or conservative; instead, it reserves ample open interfaces above the safety baseline. At the level of pilot free trade zones, regions such as Shanghai, Fujian, and Guangdong have taken the lead in formulating negative lists for cross-border data transfers, exempting data transfers outside these lists from security assessments, thereby significantly reducing compliance costs for enterprises. Among the 77 pilot measures that the State Council plans to replicate and promote by 2025, institutional innovations in the field of digital trade occupy a pivotal position, including pioneering the implementation of high-standard digital trade rules, upgrading the data exchange system of the international trade “Single Window,” and completing the “one declaration, bilateral customs clearance” pilot program with Singapore. In terms of aligning with international rules, China is actively applying to join the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), having already conducted over twenty rounds of consultations with various member parties on core issues such as digital identity authentication, cross-border data flows, and mutual recognition of electronic invoices. The World Bank, in its *2025 Global Digital Trade Report*, noted that China-led Digital Silk Road projects have already helped 23 countries establish electronic customs systems, reducing average trade clearance times by 60%. From this perspective, China’s development of its digital trade institutional framework is undergoing a critical transformation: evolving from a follower and adapter of existing rules to a participant in shaping those rules and a provider of governance solutions.