General

The annual report on China's cross border e-commerce trade released by the General Administration of Customs shows that in 2022, the scale of China's cross-border e-commerce international trade exceeded 2trillion yuan for the first time, an increase of 7.1% over 2021. At present, there are more than 100000 cross-border e-commerce entities in China. The proportion of foreign trade in the international trade of cross-border e-commerce goods has increased from less than 1% five years ago to about 5% today. Trading partners are almost all over the world.

As a new form of foreign trade with the fastest development speed, the greatest potential and the strongest driving effect, cross-border e-commerce has become a new force and an important starting point to promote the high-quality development of China's foreign trade. Especially in the complex and volatile international trade environment, cross-border e-commerce has actively responded to the uncertainty of the external market with high growth certainty, showing great market vitality and growth toughness, and also injecting new momentum into the development of global economy and trade.

At present, the overall development of China's cross-border e-commerce shows new characteristics, such as "the export scale has reached a new high, trading partners have become more diversified, the proportion of consumer goods has further increased, and the head effect of business development is obvious". The reason why the scale of cross-border e-commerce can break through repeatedly is inseparable from the two wheel drive of market and policy. More and more consumers are used to shopping online, and can easily buy all over the world with the help of cross-border e-commerce platforms. In recent years, the state has strongly supported the development of cross-border e-commerce, and the comprehensive pilot zone for cross-border e-commerce has been continuously expanded. Relevant departments have targeted to create personalized regulatory modes such as "online bonded import", "direct import", "cross-border e-commerce export overseas warehouse", and have issued more than 200 innovative measures, which has established a policy framework suitable for the healthy development of cross-border e-commerce.

The spillover effect of cross-border e-commerce continues to show. Compared with traditional foreign trade, the main body of cross-border e-commerce is mostly small and medium-sized enterprises. Through the cross-border e-commerce platform, they can quickly respond to changes in overseas markets and consumer demand preferences, which helps to enhance the competitiveness of Chinese products in overseas markets. Cross border e-commerce not only creates a track for small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises to participate in the international trade market, but also brings new opportunities for the transformation, upgrading and innovative development of foreign trade service formats. Especially after the high pressure test in recent years, China's cross-border e-commerce has initially formed a self regulating and self-improvement development ecosystem, which not only enables "made in China", but also promotes the high-quality development of foreign trade.

With the rapid development of cross-border e-commerce, it also faces some bottlenecks and problems that need to be solved. It should be pointed out that the future development of cross-border e-commerce may encounter dual challenges brought about by changes in the international trade environment and rules. At present, although the coverage of cross-border e-commerce commodities continues to expand, the policies and rules for cross-border e-commerce in many countries and regions have not yet been fully finalized, and the majority of foreign trade enterprises may encounter uncertain and inconsistent policies and regulations in the process of operation. In this regard, on the one hand, foreign trade business entities need to respond quickly, make timely adjustments, and constantly strengthen the compliance awareness; On the other hand, when negotiating trade agreements, the government and other relevant institutions should also include issues related to cross-border e-commerce in the agenda to effectively safeguard the rights and interests of the majority of cross-border e-commerce practitioners.