Overseas food, beauty products and health care products "fly" into the homes of China people, and Chinese-made clothing, shoes, hats and daily necessities reach the whole world … In recent years, cross-border e-commerce has developed rapidly with the advantages of online trading, non-contact delivery and short trading chain. According to the latest statistics, in the first half of 2024, China’s cross-border e-commerce import and export was 1.22 trillion yuan, up 10.5% year-on-year, and the growth rate was 4.4 percentage points higher than that of China’s foreign trade in the same period. The number of cross-border e-commerce and cross-border mail express parcels supervised by the customs every year reaches more than 7 billion, with an average of about 20 million pieces per day. From 1.06 trillion yuan in 2018 to 2.38 trillion yuan in 2023, the import and export of cross-border e-commerce in China has increased by 1.2 times in five years. The overall scale of cross-border e-commerce, from small to large, from large to excellent, has become a vital force in China’s foreign trade development and a new bright spot in the global economic and trade field.
As a new foreign trade format and model driven by scientific and technological innovation, cross-border e-commerce has a new business concept, strong technical support and quick response, which has played a powerful role in promoting the growth of China’s foreign trade. The innovative allocation of production factors by cross-border e-commerce is also in line with the characteristics and requirements of the development of new quality productivity. In recent years, China attaches great importance to the development of cross-border e-commerce. Since it was first mentioned in the Government Work Report in 2014, cross-border e-commerce has always been one of the key tasks of governments at all levels. The Central Economic Work Conference in 2023 clearly pointed out that it is necessary to speed up the cultivation of new kinetic energy of foreign trade, consolidate the basic disk of foreign trade and foreign capital, and expand intermediate trade, service trade, digital trade and cross-border e-commerce export. The issuance of documents such as Opinions on Expanding Cross-border E-commerce Exports and Promoting the Construction of Overseas Warehouses, and Announcement on Tax Policies for Goods Returned for Export in cross-border electronic commerce also provided strong policy support for promoting the development of cross-border e-commerce. In practice, cross-border e-commerce related initiatives have been promoted. In 2015, the State Council established a comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zone for the first time. After six expansions, 165 comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zones were established, achieving full coverage in 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. The system of cross-border e-commerce transactions, payment, logistics, customs clearance, tax refund and foreign exchange settlement has been accelerated, and technical standards, business processes, supervision models and information construction have been continuously improved. All powerful measures jointly promote cross-border e-commerce to go into battle lightly and flourish.
As a transnational transaction, trade needs to be carried out by enterprises as the main body. At present, there are 645,000 foreign trade enterprises with import and export performance in China. According to preliminary statistics, there are more than 120,000 cross-border e-commerce entities nationwide, and the rapid growth of e-commerce entities has laid a solid foundation for the development of cross-border e-commerce. Cost is the key to enhance international competitiveness, and promoting the development of cross-border e-commerce agglomeration with industrial parks is an effective way to reduce trade costs. There are more than 1,000 cross-border e-commerce industrial parks in China. Cross-border e-commerce entities gather in the parks, and the supporting facilities of upstream and downstream producer services are constantly improved, further reducing the industry cost. In the logistics and distribution, cross-border e-commerce enterprises build competitive advantages through different modes such as direct mail cross-border special lines and overseas warehouses. At present, there are more than 2,500 overseas warehouses with a total area of more than 30 million square meters. In terms of business model, the innovative custody model of cross-border e-commerce has greatly reduced the professional restrictions and international trade thresholds, giving domestic small and medium-sized enterprises and supply chain factories the opportunity to join the tide of going to sea. In marketing and management, cross-border e-commerce enterprises take advantage of data and algorithms to promote marketing and management from extensive to fine, and build the advantages of cross-border e-commerce supply chain with high cost performance, efficient production and rapid supply. The growth of business entities, the construction of cross-border e-commerce industrial parks, the construction of overseas warehouses and the refinement of management have built a comprehensive competitive advantage for cross-border e-commerce in China and provided strong support for the high-quality development of the industry.
Cross-border e-commerce is a promising track. With the help of policies and technology, China’s cross-border e-commerce has accelerated, and there is still great potential to be tapped in the future market, and there is a broad space to expand.
In the next step, we should continue to vigorously cultivate cross-border e-commerce business entities, promote the integration and development of cross-border e-commerce and industry, and create a cross-border e-commerce empowerment industrial belt. Accelerate the brand building of cross-border e-commerce enterprises, support enterprises to "borrow from the sea" and enhance the technical content and added value of trade. Increase financial support, smooth financing channels for cross-border e-commerce enterprises, optimize cross-border fund settlement services, develop supply chain finance in compliance with laws and regulations, strengthen financial guarantee for cross-border e-commerce and reduce operating costs. At the same time, optimize cross-border e-commerce export supervision, promote and standardize cross-border data flow, and improve cross-border data management and service level. In addition, we should actively participate in multilateral mechanism negotiations, exchanges and cooperation, and play an active role in the formulation of international standards and rules in electronic documents, paperless trade and electronic transactions.
It is believed that with the continuous improvement of the policy system, the increasingly sound market system, the continuous improvement of infrastructure, the improvement of the quality of superimposed products and the acceleration of brand building, China’s competitive advantage in the trade field will continue to emerge. Constantly promoting the high-quality development of cross-border e-commerce will certainly help build a new development pattern and inject new vitality into global economic development.
(Author: Liu Zhicheng, a researcher at China Macroeconomic Research Institute)