标签： 爱上海

　　Digital economy is a new economic form, which takes digital knowledge and information as the key production factors, digital technology as the core driving force, modern information network as the important carrier, and through the deep integration of digital technology and real economy, it constantly improves the digital, networked and intelligent level of economy and society. At present, digital technology has penetrated into all aspects of economy and society, and has profoundly changed people’s production and life. Digital economy exerts its strength from both digital industrialization and industrial digitalization, which has a great impact on the existing industrial structure. Accompanied by the digital economy, digital trade, as a new trade format, has become an important force leading the innovation and development of service trade, constantly expanding the boundaries of trade.

　　Under this background, we need to attach great importance to a series of remarkable changes brought about by the development of digital technology and the rise of digital economy, pay close attention to the new situation and trend of digital trade development, make full use of development opportunities, make up shortcomings and strengthen weaknesses, comprehensively promote the deep integration of digital economy and real economy, accelerate the digital transformation of industry, enhance the digital level of trade, actively participate in the formulation of international rules in the field of digital economy, and strive for more initiative in future international competition and cooperation. — — Editor

　　With the continuous integration of digital technology and international trade and the accelerated development of digital economy, the development status, trend and construction of relevant rules of digital trade have increasingly become an important issue of concern to all countries in the world.

　　Digital trade is a new trade format characterized by digital technology, digital service as the core, digital platform as the carrier and digital delivery. It mainly includes information technology services, digital content services and offshore service outsourcing, covering knowledge-intensive service trade fields such as information and communication technology, financial insurance, intellectual property rights, cultural entertainment and other commercial services, and is an important support for industrial innovation, structural upgrading and smooth internal and external circulation. Countries have generally noticed that the development of digital trade is accelerating the flow of global capital, technology, talents, knowledge, data, services and other factors, constantly expanding the boundaries of service trade and expanding economies of scale and scope.

　　The Tenth Five-Year Plan and the outline of the long-term goal in 2035 put forward the requirements of "innovating and developing service trade" and "improving the digital level of trade". Leading the innovation and development of trade with digital trade will be an important starting point for China to optimize its trade structure, enhance its trade efficiency, enhance its trade strength and further promote the high-quality development of trade in the coming period.

　　foundation in reality

　　Advantages and bottlenecks coexist.

　　During the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, with the accelerated integration of digital technology and service trade, China’s digital trade maintained rapid growth and its scale continued to expand, and its proportion in service trade increased significantly, showing bright development potential. To further promote the development of digital trade, China has obvious advantages in many aspects, such as strong industrial base and active innovation in digital economy. The main manifestations are as follows: China’s digital infrastructure is at the advanced level in the world, the scale of Internet, wireless broadband and mobile terminals is in the forefront of the world, and new technologies such as 5G, supercomputing and quantum communication are leading in the world, and information high-speed channels for key countries in the world have basically been built; The super-large-scale market has obvious advantages, which will strongly promote the industrialization and large-scale development of new technologies, new formats and new models; The industrial scale is huge and the system is complete. Intelligent manufacturing, intelligent services and intelligent agriculture will provide rich application scenarios for the development of industrial Internet and form large-scale data streams, further promoting the development of the whole industrial chain including data storage, transmission, processing and analysis. All these have laid a solid foundation for the better development of digital trade.

　　In 2020, affected by the COVID-19 epidemic, China’s traditional service trade fell sharply, and digital trade went against the trend. The import and export volume of knowledge-intensive services was 2,033.12 billion yuan, up 8.3% year-on-year, accounting for 44.5% of the total service import and export, up 9.9 percentage points. In the same year, the total import and export of cross-border e-commerce reached 1.69 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 31.1%, which became a strong support for the growth of goods trade.

　　At the same time, we should also see that some constraints in digital trade are also prominent. The service trade level of digital delivery in China is obviously lower than that of some developed economies; The self-sufficiency rate of key core technologies is low, and basic software, core components and high-end chips are imported. The core technologies such as operating systems and middleware in the global software industry chain also rely mainly on other countries, while the core links in the data value chain are controlled by a few multinational companies. There is a shortage of talents in the next-generation information technology fields such as big data, artificial intelligence and cloud computing, especially senior technical talents and leading talents.

　　development environment

　　Opportunities and challenges coexist.

　　At present, the development of global digital technology is changing with each passing day, and the level of trade digitalization is greatly improved, which provides good conditions and great opportunities for the development of digital trade in China.

　　The accelerated integration of digital technology and industry will promote the large-scale growth of global data flow, accelerate the growth of new formats and new models such as cloud outsourcing, digital media, online education, online entertainment, telemedicine, remote maintenance and mobile payment, and continuously improve the digitalization level of service trade. At the same time, countries along the "Belt and Road" have a vast market, and the digital gap between countries is huge, which has great development space in the fields of information and communication infrastructure construction and information technology service outsourcing, which provides opportunities for China to develop digital trade.

　　While welcoming development opportunities, the external environment for development is also severe and complicated, and a series of challenges cannot be ignored. On the one hand, digital trade rules have become an important part of international high-level economic and trade rules. At present, there is still a lack of uniform rules for global digital trade, and the United States and the European Union are leading the formulation of high-standard digital trade rules, which puts higher demands on the internationalization level of digital governance in China. On the other hand, with the rise of protectionism, the international restrictions on digital trade on the grounds of national security are increasing, and the number of economies that levy digital taxes is also increasing, which poses a challenge for Chinese enterprises to "go global".

　　future trend

　　The market scale is growing and the export capacity is getting stronger.

　　Generally speaking, in the coming period, the development of digital trade in China will go further, and the scale, capacity and level will continue to improve.

　　First, the scale of digital trade will continue to grow. The development of cutting-edge science and technology, the digital transformation of service industry and the continuous advancement of China’s opening up will accelerate the formation of new international competitive advantages of China’s service trade. The main reason is that the industrial foundation is more solid, and the innovation and application of digital technology will promote the emergence of new formats and new models, enrich the connotation and form of service industry and refine the division of labor. In addition, digital technology will be deeply integrated with more and more vertical fields, and the overall export of "service+"supported by digital technology and guided by high-end services will become the new engine for the development of China’s service trade.

　　Second, the export of information technology services will maintain a growth trend. Software and information technology services will continue to accelerate the integration with manufacturing, and related exports will continue to grow; Cloud services will maintain rapid growth, and the growth rate of China’s public cloud market is expected to remain above 30%; The overseas market potential of social media and search engines is huge, and the overseas business in the fields of short video, live broadcast and communication will increase substantially.

　　Third, the export capacity of digital content continues to increase. The scale of trade and investment in the digital content industry will maintain rapid growth, and the export markets in the fields of digital media, digital animation and digital publishing will also continue to expand.

　　Development ideas

　　Increase capacity, promote transformation, improve level and strengthen mechanism

　　To further enhance the strength and level of China’s digital trade and lead the development of trade innovation with digital trade, we need to clarify our thinking and focus on the following aspects:

　　Comprehensively improve the ability of technological innovation, business innovation and model innovation. Give full play to the advantages of the new national system and the national strategic scientific and technological strength, break through the bottlenecks of key core technologies such as high-end chips and basic software, and strengthen the national strategic planning, scientific and technological special implementation and relevant standards formulation in the field of digital technology; Build an autonomous and controllable digital economy innovation ecology based on the platform, constantly improve the industrial chain, stabilize the supply chain, strengthen innovation chain, promote the docking of domestic and international innovation resources, accurately match supply and demand, and form a data open sharing mechanism and a data-driven innovation development model; Support enterprises to increase R&D investment, strengthen the global distribution of intellectual property rights, create an open, inclusive and cooperative innovation environment, and actively attract foreign R&D institutions; Improve the legal system of intellectual property protection, and increase the protection of software copyright, digital technology patent, digital copyright, digital trademark right and trade secrets.

　　Comprehensively promote the digital transformation of industry and trade. Accelerate the integration of 5G, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other public service departments such as agriculture, manufacturing, service industry, medical care and education, and continuously improve the level of digital industrialization and industrial digitalization. Specifically, it is necessary to expand the import of digital services related to manufacturing, such as information technology, R&D design and intellectual property rights, so as to promote technological innovation and value chain upgrading; Relying on the trade in goods to drive the export of related digital services such as finance, insurance, settlement, e-commerce and supply chain management, and improve the value-added level of the trade value chain; Give full play to the advantages of data resource integration of platform enterprises, provide information, data and supply chain services for traditional enterprises, support manufacturing enterprises to establish digital, intelligent and networked manufacturing systems and real-time tracking service systems, and develop remote maintenance and data services.

　　Explore the international rules of high-level digital trade. Actively participating in the formulation of international rules for digital trade is the key for China to win the initiative and the right to speak in the future global trade competition pattern. In this regard, first, we should continue to optimize the negative list of foreign investment access, expand the opening up of the service industry, attract multinational companies to set up offshore data centers, settlement centers and R&D centers, and improve the level of digital delivery. Second, it is necessary to strengthen coordination and consensus with developed countries, and strengthen market integration, rule docking and mutual recognition of standards by promoting bilateral and regional free trade agreement negotiations. Third, it is necessary to promote the construction of the digital trade rules system and contribute to the "China Program" by promoting the implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP), the landing of China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment and strengthening the "Belt and Road" digital economic cooperation. Fourth, we should consider promoting the Pilot Free Trade Zone, Hainan Free Trade Port, the service trade innovation and development pilot and the national digital service export demonstration base, take the lead in benchmarking the comprehensive and progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (CPTPP) rules, conduct stress tests in promoting cross-border free flow of data, intellectual property protection, personal privacy protection, network data security and international supervision, and explore the negative list management system of cross-border service trade.

　　Strengthening international cooperation in digital trade with the construction of "Digital Silk Road" as the starting point. Improve the level of digital economic cooperation with countries related to the Belt and Road Initiative, especially relying on China’s digital technology and service advantages to deepen the markets in Southeast Asia and South Asia, promote the export of information technology services and digital content services, develop service outsourcing such as data storage and processing, R&D and design, and remote maintenance, and expand cross-border e-commerce cooperation. At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen the construction of information, law, early warning and insurance systems to prevent the risk of enterprises’ "going out".

　　Pay attention to overall development and safety. At present, data has become a core strategic resource and a key element to participate in international competition. It is necessary to establish a bottom line thinking, put data security in an important strategic position of national security, speed up the improvement of relevant laws such as data security rating and personal privacy protection, as well as the system for the confirmation, trading and use of data resources, explore the establishment of a white list system for cross-border data flow cooperation with relevant countries, and make good plans for possible changes in the international environment in the future.

　　(Author Wang Xiaohong is the Deputy Director of the Information Department of China International Economic Exchange Center Source: Economic Daily-China Economic Net)

After China Evergrande (hereinafter referred to as Evergrande) issued the liquidation order, the outside world launched a comprehensive discussion on the giant company, the most critical of which is what the company will go through in the next stage, which assets will be disposed of, and how will it end?

In order to better sort out the next step of Hengda, Blue Whale Finance and Huisheng International Capital President Huang Lichong, who has many years of experience in workout and bankruptcy reorganization, made in-depth exchanges and detailed combing.

The Hong Kong court issued a winding-up order to China Evergrande, the Hong Kong-listed platform with the stock code 03333.hk, which means that the company to be wound up is also an asset at the level of the listed platform, including the sale of shares held in subordinate "subsidiaries" and the potential liquidation (if found to be of material economic significance).

After the appointment of the liquidator, the work of the liquidator will also be carried out around the listing platform, including the disposal of physical assets, brands and intangible assets, but it is not responsible for solving the problems of all its subsidiaries, which is not a matter for the liquidator to consider. The matter for the liquidator to consider is how to get the most debt recovery for the creditors of the listed company. The recovery of shareholders will not be given priority. According to Evergrande’s situation, if there is no workout, the shareholders will basically have zero recovery.

What is winding up? Who does the liquidator serve?

This is the first step in understanding Evergrande’s next direction. According to Huang Lichong, the so-called liquidation means that the liquidation officer will dispose of the assets of China Evergrande listed companies after confirming that Evergrande is bankrupt, including valuable assets and the equity of its subsidiaries. However, from an "economic" perspective, only some assets and equity that can bring income to creditors will be dealt with, and the part that cannot bring debt recovery will not be cleaned up first. Whether to clean up without bringing debt recovery depends on the responsibility given to the liquidation officer by the court.

Liquidation and Bankruptcy. Conceptually, one is a means and the other is a legal definition. Liquidation is the process of closing down a company, in which the company’s assets are sold to repay debtors. This forced liquidation occurs when creditors, courts, or other interested parties demand that the company be dissolved. The ultimate purpose of liquidation is to end the existence of the company, realize the company’s assets, and distribute them to creditors in accordance with legal priority. Bankruptcy is a legal process that often involves the forced liquidation of a company, in which the company ceases operations and its assets are sold to pay off its debts.

The liquidator did not liquidate the assets of Hengda’s listed company at all levels, and liquidating the parent company did not mean that the subsidiary would be liquidated. The subsidiary would only be sold or apply for voluntary liquidation if the creditor recovery was increased. Because the liquidator’s responsibility was only to recover the last valuable assets for his creditors and shareholders, the subsidiary without recovery value would not be touched.

If the liquidated assets have no recovery value, but instead generate a lot of costs for the subsidiary, there will also be a statutory liability issue for the liquidator. The liquidator cannot spend too much of the liquidated company’s funds to bring valuable recovery to creditors.

In the process of disposing of assets, it is necessary to consider the cost comprehensively and maximize the return of creditors. The interests of Hengda equity holders are among the secondary considerations. This is the test of the liquidator. He needs to weigh which assets are worth clearing and find the corresponding receiver.

According to public information, Alvarez and Marsal, the liquidator appointed as China Evergrande, is an internationally renowned enterprise rescue and liquidation company.

After the appointment of a liquidator, what assets can he dispose of? Does he have the right to dispose of domestic assets?

Huang Lichong said that although the liquidator theoretically has the right to appoint directors of subsidiaries and then appoint directors of next-level companies to deal with all domestic and foreign assets of Evergrande, it must be sorted out according to the equity ownership relationship, and the creditor’s rights of non-listed companies can be repaid according to each level before distribution.

From the perspective of liquidators, they mainly serve the creditors of listed companies, considering that the assets that can be distributed to shareholders or creditors after liquidation may mainly come from overseas rather than domestic. Because most of the assets in China are mortgaged or preserved by domestic creditors, even if someone takes over, after distributing them to secured debtors and non-mortgaged domestic creditors, the assets that can achieve income distribution are estimated to be very small, or even zero.

For projects with ownership in China, the liquidator will send a letter informing them that the sale, disposal or major decisions of assets must be approved by the liquidator, but generally will not interfere with or even participate in the operation of domestic projects.

Huang Lichong believes that although Hengda has said that it will steadily promote the normal operation of the group’s business, after the liquidation order is issued, it will definitely have an impact on Hengda’s business operation. In the future, project companies in various regions can only seek "self-help" and "self-governance", and the flexible capital scheduling support from the group will be reduced. Coupled with the blessing of the liquidation order, the initiative and enthusiasm of Hengda’s management may be affected, and the layoff of redundant employees will also be accelerated.

How to deal with the subsidiaries of listed companies that cannot be sold by the liquidator in the future?

Mr. Huang said the assets could be wound up voluntarily and a new liquidator appointed by the court. He did not rule out a future workout with domestic creditors with the support of white warriors at the subsidiary level, and finally out of the control of China Evergrande.

Regarding China Evergrande’s Hengda property and Hengda Automobile, Huang Lichong said that property companies are likely to seek a sale, and Hengda Automobile may find it difficult to find a takeover target in the current environment, and it is difficult to say whether it will eventually follow in the footsteps of China Evergrande.

Huang Lichong pointed out that according to the bankruptcy liquidation schedule of Shenzhen Guangyao Group, the former took seven years, while for China Evergrande, which has a large amount of debt and a complex structure, the time to complete the liquidation will undoubtedly be longer.

Data show that as of the first half of 2023, Hengda’s total debt was 2.3882 trillion yuan, excluding the advance payment of the debt was 1.7842 trillion yuan, and the total assets were 1.7439 trillion yuan.

Huang Lichong estimates that after the entire Hengda Group is completely liquidated, Hengda’s relevant stakeholders, including suppliers, joint venture shareholders, shareholders of listed companies and various groups and group subsidiaries, after creditors recover the remaining value, including the previous share price loss, the estimated cumulative loss may reach 2.50 trillion yuan.