Digital finance at Hongqiao: turning pilots into global trade infrastructure

By Luigi Gambardella, President of ChinaEU

Few outside China need an introduction to the China International Import Expo (CIIE), the world’s largest import-themed fair. What is less well known is that, alongside CIIE every year, Hongqiao International Economic Forum (HQF) is held. HQF brings together Nobel laureates, policymakers, and industry leaders to communicate the most pressing and highlights issues in global trade and economic governance.

If there is one lesson from the 7th HQF, it is that finance is no longer a back-office service to trade—it is becoming the very infrastructure on which global commerce runs. Held in parallel with the 7th CIIE, the forum devoted a session to “Digital Finance Boosting Global Economic and Trade Development”, and the exchanges revealed how quickly data rails and financial rails are converging.

The story begins with efficiency. Exporters once endured weeks of delays between shipment and payment, trapped by lengthy onboarding and collateral checks. Today, digital onboarding, e-KYC and algorithmic risk controls are shrinking those delays to days, even hours. What looks like a technical upgrade has profound consequences: less working capital locked up, fewer small exporters forced to abandon foreign orders for lack of liquidity. Nobel laureate Eric Maskin underlined that such efficiency gains are not only technical but systemic. By shortening delays between shipment and payment, digital finance frees up working capital that small exporters desperately need.

Equally striking is the way digital finance has started to democratise trade. In China, as in Europe, smaller firms typically lack the fixed assets that banks demand as collateral. By tapping verified transaction data—customs filings, logistics records, invoice trails—new scoring models are opening credit lines to businesses once invisible to traditional lenders. Several speakers stressed that these data-based financing models are giving SMEs a fair chance to scale up in global supply chains. This support allows them not only to improve efficiency and competitiveness but also to better integrate into international supply chains and benefit from new trade opportunities.

The paralleled session’s discussions also returned to an idea that has quietly moved from jargon to necessity: interoperability. Finance platforms, customs systems and logistics networks still speak in different languages, forcing exporters to resubmit the same data at every border. Industry panelists argued that the next productivity leap lies not in more technology but in common standards. Without interoperability, exporters remain stuck in costly duplications of paperwork at every crossing.

It was against this backdrop that speakers converged on a shared conclusion: portable digital identities, shared document formats and transferable credentials are what will eventually turn today’s patchwork into a seamless marketplace. Far from abstract concepts, these are the building blocks of a new trade infrastructure where trust, compliance, and settlement travel as seamlessly as goods.

Such arguments resonate because they are framed against a larger backdrop: China’s commitment to “high-standard opening-up”. In plain terms, Beijing is signaling that data exchange is to the 21st century what containerisation was to the 20th: the invisible infrastructure of trade. That message matters for policymakers and businesses alike. It links small pilots—programmable trade credit, tokenised bills of lading—to the national strategy of embedding openness into the architecture of commerce.

CIIE, the world’s largest import-themed expo, plays a complementary role. Where HQF provides the narrative, CIIE provides the proving ground. The Innovation Incubation Special Section has become a live sandbox for fintech, smart logistics and compliance technologies. Here, start-ups pitch not just apps but integrations: API (Application Programming Interface) gateways that plug into customs systems, digital wallets that hold trade credentials, compliance modules tuned to local regulations. For many corporates, it is the only place where policy signals, platform providers and potential buyers converge in the same week.

The implications of this push for interoperability stretch beyond China. As the World Trade Organization wrestles with digital trade norms—on e-signatures, invoicing standards and data localisation—the risk is that fragmented rules create new digital borders. HQF’s emphasis on shared frameworks is therefore not merely about easing trade with China; it is about preventing the fracturing of global supply chains.

The bottom line is clear. Finance, once reactive to trade, is becoming programmable infrastructure in its own right. The firms and policymakers that succeed will be those who marry innovation with interoperability, extending the benefits of globalisation to companies previously excluded. Shanghai is where the blueprint is drafted; the expo floor is where it begins to scale.

And the larger message for the international community is equally clear: digital finance cannot remain a patchwork of national experiments. It must evolve into a global common—interoperable, trusted and inclusive—if trade is to remain the engine of prosperity. From Shanghai to Brussels, from small exporters to multilateral regulators, the call is the same: build the rules and rails of digital trade together, or risk leaving the gains of openness stranded at the border.