China’s Cross-border e-Commerce Retail Imports Exceed CNY 100 Billion

In recent years, China’s cross-border e-commerce import and export scale has continued to grow rapidly, becoming a new bright spot in the development of foreign trade. 6 departments including the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China have explicitly expanded the cross-border e-commerce retail import pilot to all cities where pilot free trade zones, comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zones, comprehensive bonded zones, import trade promotion innovation demonstration zones, and bonded logistics centers are located. What impact will the expansion of the pilot scope bring, and what is the current development trend of cross-border e-commerce?

Cross-border e-commerce retail imports are not far away from us. Domestic consumers purchasing overseas goods through cross-border e-commerce platforms constitute cross-border e-commerce retail imports. In 2020, China’s cross-border e-commerce retail import scale has exceeded 100 billion yuan.

The development of new business formats is inseparable from the strong support of relevant policies. Since the launch of the cross-border e-commerce retail import pilot in November 2018, various departments and localities have actively explored and continuously improved the policy system. At the same time, the risk prevention and control and supervision systems are gradually improving. Supervision during and after the event is powerful and effective, and it has the conditions for replication and promotion on a larger scale.

As the pace of consumption upgrades continues to accelerate, Chinese consumers’ demand for high-quality imported goods is increasing day by day. More consumer groups hope to buy all over the world without leaving their homes, and there is more room for the development of cross-border e-commerce retail imports. In the next step, the Ministry of Commerce of China will work with relevant departments to urge the pilot cities to strictly implement the requirements and promote the healthy and sustainable development of cross-border e-commerce retail imports.

Support policies are introduced intensively to create a good environment for rapid development

In March 2021, the first China Cross-border E-commerce Fair will be held in Fuzhou, attracting a total of 2,363 companies to participate in the exhibition, covering 33 cross-border e-commerce platforms around the world. According to incomplete statistics, a total of over 3.5 billion US dollars was reached in the exhibition. According to customs data, China’s cross-border e-commerce imports and exports are 1.69 trillion yuan in 2020, a year-on-year increase of 31.1%. Cross-border e-commerce has gradually become a new engine for high-quality development of foreign trade.

In recent years, cross-border e-commerce has maintained a double-digit growth rate and has made significant contributions to the development of China’s foreign trade. Especially in 2020, the realization of a V-shaped reversal in China’s foreign trade under severe challenges is not unrelated to the development of cross-border e-commerce. Cross-border e-commerce has given full play to its unique advantages of breaking through time and space constraints, low cost, and high efficiency. It has become an important choice for companies to carry out international trade and a pioneer in foreign trade innovation and development, and has played an active role in responding to the impact of the epidemic.

In 2020, China will add 46 new cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test areas, and the cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test areas will be expanded to 105. More than 330 industrial parks have been built in various cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones, which have created more than 3 million jobs.

Under the background that customs are conducting export supervision pilots and all regions are accelerating the construction of comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zones, cross-border e-commerce will continue to flourish under the encouragement of policies and the environment, injecting new vitality into China’s foreign trade transformation and upgrading.

While digital technology is widely used in all aspects, supervision methods need to keep pace with the times

The wide application of digital technologies such as cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain in all aspects of cross-border trade has driven the continuous transformation and upgrading of cross-border e-commerce.

The new format of digital foreign trade relies on a full-link cross-border trade platform to form an ecosystem that integrates manufacturers, suppliers, retailers, consumers, logistics, finance, and government regulatory agencies. It not only includes cross-border commodity circulation, but also related logistics, finance, information, payment, settlement, credit investigation, fiscal and taxation and other supporting services, efficient customs clearance, foreign exchange collection, tax refund and other comprehensive foreign trade services, as well as informatization, Digital and intelligent new supervision methods and new international rules system.

It is precisely because of the advantages of the super-large-scale market, the industrial promotion mechanism and the inclusive supervision method that have promoted the rapid growth of China’s cross-border e-commerce enterprises, and the rapid rise of enterprise scale and strength. Cross-border e-commerce is still in the initial stage of development. Supporting facilities such as warehousing, transportation, distribution, after-sales service, experience, payment and settlement still need to be improved, and the supervision method also needs to keep pace with the times, and it is necessary to adhere to both standardization and development.

There is demand in the market, policies have added vitality, cross-border e-commerce is growing strongly, and supporting facilities are gradually following up. At present, the number of overseas warehouses of China’s cross-border e-commerce is more than 1,800, and the growth rate will reach 80% in 2020, and the area will exceed 12 million square meters.