On November 23rd, the second Global Digital Trade Expo with the theme "Global Digital Trade Facilitator" (hereinafter referred to as "GDTE") was held in Hangzhou. As the only national-level, international, and professional expo with the theme of digital trade in China, the GDTE of this year brought together numerous industry experts, scholars, and professionals to engage in specialized discussions on topics such as digital cultural trade, digital finance, intellectual property in the digital economy, and data governance. The goal was to collaboratively explore new opportunities for the development of digital trade. As a leading digital technology service provider in China, iSoftStone was invited to participate. In the session on "High-Quality Development of Digital Service Trade", Peng Qiang, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer of iSoftStone, delivered a keynote speech titled Embracing the Intelligent Era, Accelerating Transformation and Upgrading. Simultaneously, iSoftStone successfully made it to the list of Top 100 Digital Trade Enterprises in 2023 released by CCID Consulting.

Currently, digital trade is increasingly becoming a crucial driving force in promoting China's continuous improvement of its level of openness to the outside world, facilitating the interconnected flow of economic factors, and building a strong trading nation. According to the Digital Trade Development and Cooperation Report 2023 released by the Development Research Center of the State Council, over the past three years, the scale of global cross-border data flow has grown by 120.6%, and the scale of digital service trade has increased by 36.9%, both surpassing the growth rates of global services trade and goods trade during the same period. China's digital trade development scale and growth rate rank among the top in the world. In 2022, China's total digital service imports and exports reached $371.08 billion, accounting for 41.7% of the total service imports and exports.

With the continuous iteration of digital technology, especially the explosive development of "Artificial Intelligence Generated Content" (AIGC), represented by generative AI and large models, the comprehensive penetration and breakthrough applications of digital technology will profoundly impact all industries in society. Peng Qiang stated that only by accelerating intelligent transformation can enterprises possibly face future global competition and create future-oriented businesses through intelligence. Aligning with customer needs and pain points, iSoftStone, in collaboration with its proprietary Merak 2.0 MaaS platform, applies large-scale models to various business scenarioses, enabling AI empowerment for industry clients. For example, in the field of software engineering, iSoftStone has created a multi-tool, multi-mode AI-enhanced integrated development environment for clients. This allows businesses to flexibly and freely integrate mainstream commercial/open-source models, opening new paths for efficiency and quality improvement throughout the software development life cycle. In the financial sector, iSoftStone, through collaboration with insurance companies based on the original insurance solutions, integrates with the Merak 2.0 platform to enhance the entire value chain processes for clients. This includes AI augmentation for channel sales, underwriting, claims processing, payments, reinsurance, customer service, and other aspects of the insurance business. This AI-powered enhancement empowers insurance clients for intelligent transformation and sustainable development.

In the digital era, the rapid growth and expansion of service trade are closely related to the widespread application of digital technology. In the backdrop of the dominant rise of AI, driving the transformation of service trade towards intelligence, digitization, and networking is an inevitable process. In the future, with the high-end transformation of the entire trade industry chain, the division of labor for all enterprises in the industry and value chains will continue to deepen. The global trade network and landscape will be reshaped. To win in the future, all participants must go with the flow and actively embrace the wave of intelligence.