China-ASEAN Bilateral Digital Trade under the RCEP Digital Trade Framework: Current situations, Challenges, and Responses

Abstract

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) address the increasing need for digital trade cooperation between China and ASEAN, reflecting their growing demands in this area. However, China and ASEAN face challenges in their digital economic and trade collaboration, including the "digital divide," power struggles over sovereignty, governance of data localization, etc. The paper analyzes the current state and future direction of global digital trade development, interprets the digital trade rules within RCEP and analyze their implications for China-ASEAN bilateral trade, then examins the three key aspects of China-ASEAN digital trade development and four major challenges faced by China-ASEAN digital trade within the framework of RECP, eventually proposes countermeasures and recommendations to enhance China-ASEAN digital trade from four key perspectives.