Cross-border e-commerce development enters the fast lane

The first China Cross-border E-commerce Fair was held in Fuzhou, Fujian this year. Buyers learned about the products on display in front of a 3C product booth. Xinhua News Agency reporter Lin Shanchuan photo

Starting from September, the parcels collected through the warehouses in Yiwu or Shenzhen’s core industrial belt can fly directly to Southeast Asian destinations from the nearest air port. "Most parcels can be delivered door-to-door in 3 days, and can be delivered to consumers within 48 hours at the earliest.".

This is the cross-border express logistics service from China to Xinmatai officially launched by Best International in China International Fair for Trade in Services in 2021 not long ago. The business accurately points to the trend of multi-polarization of cross-border e-commerce in Southeast Asia, showing that China’s cross-border e-commerce continues to maintain a good momentum and has become a new fulcrum in the rapid growth of foreign trade.

"From January to June this year, the import and export volume of cross-border e-commerce was 886.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28.6%." At the Cross-border E-commerce Forum of "2021 China E-commerce Conference" held recently, Zhang Li, deputy director of the Foreign Trade Department of the Ministry of Commerce, said that cross-border e-commerce has become a new foreign trade format with the fastest development, the greatest potential and the strongest leading role in China.

Stimulate market vitality

In recent years, under the background of the deep integration of the Internet and economic globalization, the global trade format has undergone major changes, and the new economic form of "digital trade" represented by cross-border e-commerce has achieved rapid development from scratch and from small to large.

Zhang Dawei, vice chairman and secretary general of China International Economic Exchange Center, said recently that China’s series of measures to support the development of cross-border e-commerce have greatly stimulated the market vitality of cross-border e-commerce, played a pulling role in the global cross-border e-commerce market, and enabled countless small and medium-sized enterprises and practitioners to directly integrate into the global industrial chain supply chain and directly enter the global consumer market.

"Cross-border e-commerce is favored by consumers around the world with its unique advantages of low cost, high efficiency and breakthrough in time and space." Hong Yong, an associate researcher at the E-commerce Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, said that in recent years, the scale of cross-border electronic commerce transactions in China has continued to grow, and it has become a new kinetic energy for foreign trade development, a new channel for transformation and upgrading, and a new starting point for high-quality development.

Sang Baichuan, president of university of international business and economics Institute of International Economics, believes that with the help of the Internet platform, new trade modes such as cross-border e-commerce have greatly satisfied the information symmetry between the supply and demand sides, and also improved the efficiency of bilateral trade. At the same time, because China’s product system is complete, it can provide products to other countries on a large scale and in a concentrated way, reducing import and export costs, thus meeting the needs of consumers and investors. It can be said that a large number of products with high quality and good price are also the reasons for the rapid development of cross-border e-commerce in China.

Last year, when the COVID-19 epidemic had a profound impact on the global supply chain and traditional economic and trade activities, cross-border e-commerce in China bucked the trend, achieving an annual import and export volume of 1.69 trillion yuan, up 31.1% year-on-year, nearly 10 times the scale five years ago, which strongly supported the growth of China’s import and export trade. In July this year, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the Development of New Foreign Trade Forms and Models", which once again released major favorable policies in the field of cross-border e-commerce.

Improve the institutional framework

Since 2015, China has set up 105 cross-border e-commerce comprehensive experimental zones in five batches, covering basically the whole country. The scale of the "experimental field" where cross-border e-commerce is tried first has been continuously expanded, and the development pattern of land and sea linkage and two-way mutual assistance between east and west has been further improved.

"The Ministry of Commerce and other departments have formed nearly 70 mature experiences and practices through active exploration, and built a cross-border e-commerce system framework with’ six systems and two platforms’ as the core." Hong Yong said that, for example, China’s customs declaration mode of "list verification and summary statistics" has improved customs clearance efficiency, and cross-border e-commerce tax preferential policies such as approved collection have greatly reduced the burden on enterprises. The scope of cross-border e-commerce B2B export supervision pilot and retail import pilot continued to expand. The list of cross-border e-commerce retail imports was further optimized to better meet domestic consumer demand. In addition, a series of regulations on the management of cross-border e-commerce import and export returns have been issued, which makes it more convenient for consumers to return goods.

According to Wei Hao, a professor at the School of Economics and Business Administration of Beijing Normal University and director of the Department of International Economics and Trade, the support policies for cross-border e-commerce should focus on the pain points and difficulties in the development of cross-border e-commerce and put forward pragmatic measures that meet the expectations of enterprises. "We must not only solve the short-term problems that restrict development, but also pay attention to the improvement of infrastructure and mechanisms for long-term development."

In the short term, we should attach great importance to the construction of overseas warehouses, focus on strengthening subject cultivation, promoting digital development, strengthening standard construction and improving overseas warehouse network, and support the construction of overseas warehouses with various investment and financing methods and increasing export credit insurance. In addition, it is necessary to constantly improve the management policies for cross-border e-commerce import and export returns and ease the operating pressure of enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises.

In the long run, it is necessary to study and formulate intellectual property protection policies for cross-border e-commerce, improve various support policies such as finance and taxation, vigorously cultivate large-scale international logistics enterprises, explore the construction of overseas logistics intelligent platforms, build independent large-scale international e-commerce platforms, and strengthen infrastructure construction, so as to lay a solid foundation for the long-term development of cross-border e-commerce.

Dealing with development risks

At present, China’s cross-border e-commerce has also encountered some bottlenecks in its overseas development. Due to the different laws, cultures and business habits of different countries, cross-border e-commerce businesses will encounter various risks and challenges.

"This is an inevitable problem in the development of the industry." Hong Yong said that some cross-border e-commerce merchants were forced to be removed from the cross-border e-commerce platform on a large scale because they were suspected of violating the rules of the platform by brushing bills and comments. In addition, affected by the rebound of COVID-19 epidemic, the international shipping price has been rising, and the profits of cross-border e-commerce enterprises have also been severely squeezed.

"These problems highlight the unstable foundation for the stable development, rapid development and long-term development of cross-border e-commerce in China, the imperfect mechanism and system, and the development environment still needs to be optimized." Wei Hao believes that the main reasons for these problems are the lack of independent e-commerce platform, especially the support of a large platform with a large international market share, insufficient international logistics and transportation capacity suitable for the rapid development of cross-border e-commerce, insufficient understanding of relevant rules in developed countries such as Europe and the United States, need to pay more attention to intellectual property protection, and lack of awareness and ability to deal with international risks.

Wei Hao said that we should speed up the construction of cross-border e-commerce online integrated service platform to reduce the burden on enterprises and improve efficiency; It is necessary to attach great importance to regulatory issues such as risk prevention and control, standardize the development of the industry, and enhance the ability of the industry to cope with risks; Steadily promote the construction of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive experimental zone, provide a leading role for the future development of cross-border e-commerce, and actively copy and promote the mature experience and practices of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive experimental zone to the whole country.

Speaking of the future development of cross-border e-commerce, Hong Yong believes that we should focus on the functions of overseas warehouses, the protection of intellectual property rights and the establishment of international rules for cross-border e-commerce. At present, most overseas warehouses do not have the functions of providing customs clearance services, supply chain financial services, after-sales services and personalized services. At the same time, some products of cross-border e-commerce sellers involved in intellectual property infringement, which also affected the overall image of China sellers to some extent. Due to the different development priorities and interests of cross-border e-commerce in different countries, no unified international rules for cross-border e-commerce have yet been formed. China should actively participate in international exchanges and rules exploration of cross-border e-commerce, and launch the "China Program" for cross-border e-commerce in the multi-bilateral cooperation mechanism. (Reporter Feng Qiyu Ji Leilei)