Cross-border e-commerce to open up new growth points of foreign trade

Cross-border e-commerce has developed rapidly, has great market potential and strong driving role, and has become a new engine for the high-quality development of foreign trade. In the first half of the year, China's cross-border e-commerce import and export maintained a good development momentum, effectively helping China's foreign trade to stabilize the scale and excellent structure. Enterprise exploration, policy assistance, and multiple measures will open up a broader development space for cross-border e-commerce.

In recent years, China's cross-border e-commerce has developed rapidly, and its advantages in "buying the world and selling the world" have continued to consolidate and release their potential, becoming a new engine for the high-quality development of foreign trade. Customs data show that in 2022, China's cross-border e-commerce import and export scale exceeded 2 trillion yuan for the first time, reaching 2.1 trillion yuan, an increase of 2021.7% over 1, accounting for 4.9% of the total import and export value of national trade in goods.

In the first half of this year, in the face of a complex and severe external environment, the scale of China's foreign trade imports and exports exceeded 20 trillion yuan for the first time in the same period in history, showing strong resilience. In the first half of the year, China's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports reached 1.1 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16%. Among them, exports were 8210 billion yuan, an increase of 19.9%, and imports were 2760 billion yuan, an increase of 5.7%, maintaining a good momentum of development and effectively helping China's foreign trade stabilize the scale and excellent structure.

With rapid development, cross-border e-commerce has become a scale

In the production workshop of Jiangsu Huajia Silk Co., Ltd., Wujiang District, Suzhou, Jiangsu, the production lines such as twisting, weaving, cutting and sewing are running in an orderly manner. In the warehouse, packaged silk fabrics and clothing are neatly arranged and waiting to be sent to all over the world.

"We are constantly opening up new markets and export channels to maintain business development, driving order optimization through big data analysis of market demand, and cross-border e-commerce pushing us to achieve flexible manufacturing and cover a wider market with less cost." Wang Yongyu, sales director of Huajia Silk, said that in August last year, enterprises tested the water of cross-border e-commerce B8B (business-to-business) export business, and in the first half of this year, the total export volume of enterprises through cross-border e-commerce has exceeded 2 million yuan.

Taking advantage of the east wind of cross-border e-commerce, silk products in Wujiang District have accelerated their arrival in overseas markets. According to the statistics of Wujiang Customs, there are currently 160 cross-border e-commerce enterprises in Wujiang District. In the first half of this year, the export of silk products in Wujiang District reached 2 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 34.56%.

Cross-border e-commerce has fast development, large market potential and strong driving role, which can match supply and demand at low cost and high efficiency, and provide personalized and high-quality services for more enterprises and end consumers. In recent years, China's cross-border e-commerce development has made gratifying progress. According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, the proportion of cross-border e-commerce goods import and export in foreign trade has increased from less than 5% five years ago to about 1% at present.

"Cross-border e-commerce is changing from a new format of foreign trade to a new normal of foreign trade." Zhao Ping, president of the Research Institute of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, believes that the current development of cross-border e-commerce presents three major trends - one is the normalization of cross-border e-commerce market demand. Domestic and international online consumption habits have been formed, laying a market foundation for the development of cross-border e-commerce. The second is the institutionalization of cross-border e-commerce rules. The multilateral and bilateral rules related to cross-border e-commerce have been continuously improved, providing an institutional guarantee for the development of cross-border e-commerce. The third is the rise of the cross-border e-commerce independent station model. In the past two years, private domain traffic formats have emerged in the e-commerce field, and brand enterprises have established self-operated mobile applications online to directly reach users. The development model of cross-border e-commerce has shifted to the development trend of coexistence of platform mode and independent station model, creating new growth points for the development of cross-border e-commerce.

Perfect business formats, help more brands go global

With the continuous development of cross-border e-commerce, supporting new formats such as overseas warehouses have accelerated and improved.

In Yuhang District, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Zhejiang Shuanggun Technology Co., Ltd. has steadily promoted the overseas warehouse business of cross-border e-commerce export. "Traditional foreign trade is waiting for others to give orders, our bargaining power is relatively weak, cross-border e-commerce provides new channels and opportunities for our brands to go overseas." Yu Jiaqi, head of customs affairs of Double Gun Technology, said, "Our export products mainly include bamboo chopsticks, cutting boards, etc., which have always been mainly sold to major foreign supermarkets. Now, we have begun to expand the market and increase the market investment in overseas e-commerce platforms. ”

Direct-to-consumer also means faster response. Due to the flexible operation advantages of advance preparation, batch transportation and local return, cross-border e-commerce export overseas warehouse has become an important channel and growth momentum for cross-border e-commerce enterprises' export. "Now, after foreign consumers place an order on the platform, we can deliver directly from the overseas warehouse, which has a better shopping experience, which is very helpful for improving word of mouth and popularity." Yu Jiaqi said. According to reports, Hangzhou Customs has completed the filing of 415 cross-border e-commerce export overseas warehouse enterprises.

Recently, the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce, together with customs, taxation, foreign exchange management and other departments, launched a cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouse comprehensive service platform, integrating overseas warehouse goods export customs clearance, overseas sales, international logistics and other information, building a full-process digital trade closed-loop at home and abroad in overseas warehouses, effectively solving the pain points faced by cross-border e-commerce enterprises in overseas warehouse exports, such as data aggregation, export tax rebates, and foreign exchange collection and settlement, and further releasing the development potential of cross-border e-commerce export overseas warehouses.

Driven by policies such as cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones, China's cross-border e-commerce ecology has been continuously improved. Data show that there are more than 10,20 cross-border e-commerce entities in China, more than 690,29 independent stations have been built, about <> cross-border e-commerce industrial parks in the comprehensive pilot zone, and bilateral e-commerce cooperation memorandums have been signed with <> countries.

The space is vast and multiple measures are taken to promote development

Cross-border e-commerce is a growing foreign trade growth point, but it is also facing challenges. Some experts believe that localization is a major problem faced by many cross-border e-commerce companies going overseas. How to meet local demand, cope with industry barriers, and comply with regulatory requirements requires enterprises to base themselves on the comprehensive situation of overseas markets, efficiently organize international supply chains, and provide better services and products.

How to better seize new opportunities for cross-border e-commerce development? Zhao Ping believes that enterprises should have an in-depth understanding of the cutting-edge rules in the field of cross-border e-commerce, make good use of the rules, do a good job in compliance, and at the same time choose the appropriate cross-border e-commerce model according to their own characteristics. It is also necessary to comply with the general trend of green development, reduce environmental pollution in production methods, transportation methods, packaging methods, etc., explore the construction of a full-life cycle carbon footprint tracking system for foreign trade products exported through cross-border e-commerce channels, and seize more new development opportunities in the green transformation of global trade.

To promote the development of cross-border e-commerce, a package of measures continues to make efforts. The Ministry of Commerce said that it will develop the "cross-border e-commerce + industrial belt", relying on China's 165 cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones, combined with the industrial endowments and location advantages of various places, to promote more local characteristic products to better enter the international market. At the same time, support and guide the cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zone to further optimize the function of the service platform, guide overseas warehouse enterprises to connect the comprehensive service platform, and strive to integrate customs clearance, taxation, finance, and overseas warehousing functions to achieve "one-point access, one-stop" comprehensive services.

All localities are also actively promoting the high-quality development of cross-border e-commerce. Recently, Shanghai issued the "Shanghai Action Plan for Promoting the High-quality Development of Cross-border E-commerce (2023-2025)", proposing 18 key tasks such as continuing to promote the construction of cross-border e-commerce demonstration parks, implementing the "excellent products going abroad" action plan, and improving the public service level of cross-border e-commerce. Shandong proposed that by 2025, the province will strive to build 20 cross-border e-commerce characteristic industrial belts, cultivate 100 well-known cross-border e-commerce brands with strong international competitiveness, and incubate 1000,<> cutting-edge cross-border e-commerce enterprises.