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The sudden COVID-19 outbreak dealt a severe blow to trade worldwide, with many scholars researching this pandemic's impact on global commerce. They showed that the COVID-19 pandemic had caused severe damage to world trade and had adverse effects on the cross-border transactions of both exporting and importing countries (Gruszczynski, 2020; Kumari and Bharti, 2021). As for China, the pandemic also revealed significant adverse effects on its export trade (Zhao et al., 2021; Liu et al.,2022).
However, contrary to the general belief that the outbreak has brought about an overall negative impact on cross-border business, digital trade has performed differently during this pandemic period. Hu et al. (2022) revealed that COVID-19 inhibited China's export trade, but digital-product exports significantly tapered the adverse effects. To some extent, digital-product trade not only helps to promote the development of the service industry and cross-border e-commerce but has become the main driving force and growth factor for the recovery and development of the traditional manufacturing industry (Sarafanov and Bai, 2018).
In response, governments worldwide have implemented trade-related measures and some trade restrictions. At the same time, numerous scholars postulated the effects of anti-epidemic policies on international trade. Maliszewskael et al. (2020) found that the restrictive policies of the COVID-19 pandemic have increased international trade costs and reduced international travel. Vo and Tran (2021) pointed out that the increase in transportation costs and the uncertainty of economic policies brought by containment measures such as border shutdowns have seriously affected the normal development of global trade. Handoyo (2020) emphasized that trade restrictions and rising costs are the main reasons for the decline in international trade during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Few works of literature analyze the anti-epidemic policies on digital products trade, let alone the situation in China. Theoretically, this pandemic may promote the rapid development of the digital products trade in the face of various lockdown policies. A global change in the way of life, work, and socialization resulting from COVID-19 indicated that a basic level of digital integration is becoming necessary (Kuc-Czarnecka,2020). Lockdown policies compel people to use digital products to adapt to the fast-changing reality, which may increase the demand for digital products. But as governments worldwide have been implementing trade-related measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and some trade restrictions, the true effects of coronavirus pandemic policies on digital product trade may depend on the stringency of these policies. Mitchell and Mishra (2017) indicate that the policy measures to restrict cross-border data transfers would increase the cost of digital trade.
Meanwhile, though digital products trade is rapidly developing, gradually penetrating all economic fields globally, a set of mature, authoritative, and universal laws, regulations, and policy-supporting systems has not yet been formed. More and more countries and international organizations tend to trade protectionism against digital products. For example, during the epidemic, economies' imposition of a digital service tax on some digital companies in the United States would exacerbate existing trade tensions (Vlassis,2020). Under this circumstance, the significance of the digital trade agreement is becoming remarkable. Effective digital trade rules can reduce trade barriers for digital products and promote the development of digital product trade(Meltzer,2018). Li et al. (2021) proved that in the FTA digital trade rules, the in-depth improvement of provisions of market access, trade facilitation, consumer protection, and dispute settlement would significantly promote digital exports among FTA member countries.