General

In recent years, a series of support policies related to cross-border e-commerce have been introduced at the national level. In the COVID-19, new forms and models of foreign trade development have emerged, which has also promoted the rapid growth of China's cross-border e-commerce scale.

According to customs data, since 2017, the scale of China's cross-border e-commerce has increased by nearly 10 times in five years; In 2022, China's cross-border e-commerce import and export will reach 2.11 trillion yuan, up 9.8%. Customs data showed that the export was 1.55 trillion yuan, up 11.7%; Import was 0.56 trillion yuan, up 4.9%.

As a new engine for the development of cross-border e-commerce, digital trade was first included in the government work report in 2022. At the local two sessions this year, cross-border e-commerce and digital trade were also mentioned frequently, becoming a strong engine for promoting the innovation and development of foreign trade in many places.

Accelerating the cultivation of a number of new international trade benchmarking enterprises such as cross-border e-commerce, offshore trade, digital trade, and comprehensive foreign trade services is the focus of Shanghai this year. The recently issued Shanghai Action Plan for Promoting Confidence, Expanding Demand, Stabilizing Growth and Promoting Development further proposes to accelerate the development of new international trade and strive to create the first batch of "Silk Road E-commerce" cooperation pilot zones and national service trade innovation and development demonstration zones.

According to customs data, Zhejiang this year formulated a clear goal of "ensuring the realization of 470 billion yuan of digital trade and more than 900 billion yuan of cross-border RMB settlement", and proposed to vigorously develop cross-border e-commerce, overseas warehouse, market procurement and other new business forms, and accelerate the construction of a strong trade province.

Fujian, Liaoning, Sichuan, Guangxi, Yunnan and other places have also proposed to accelerate the development of cross-border e-commerce, overseas warehouses, bonded maintenance and other new business forms, and support enterprises to accelerate the layout of overseas warehouses in key areas.

According to customs data, in November last year, the State Council agreed to establish a comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zone in 33 cities and regions including Langfang, Zaozhuang and Lhasa. So far, the number of comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zones in China has reached 165, covering 31 provinces, regions and cities.

Bai Ming, deputy director of the International Market Research Institute of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, said that the expansion of the comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zone will promote the reform and innovation of all regions, facilitate the accelerated integration of industrial digitization and trade digitization, further promote trade facilitation, regulatory system innovation, and participate in the docking of international rules, and accumulate new advantages for the high-quality development of China's foreign trade.

Through the work reports of local governments, we can see that this year, all regions will take the construction of comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zones as an important starting point to promote the high-quality development of foreign trade.

For example, Guangdong proposed to accelerate the construction of a cross-border e-commerce demonstration province and a digital pilot zone for global trade in the Great Bay Area. According to the customs data, Shandong proposed to make good use of the comprehensive pilot zones of cross-border e-commerce in 16 cities, optimize the layout of overseas warehouses, and increase the import and export of cross-border e-commerce by more than 10%. At the same time, it deepened the innovative development pilot of service trade in Jinan, Qingdao, and Weihai, and built the national digital, cultural and other characteristic service export bases. Jiangsu proposed to vigorously develop service trade and digital trade, speed up the construction of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zone, and solidly promote the pilot of domestic and foreign trade integration. Shanxi proposes to focus on developing new forms of foreign trade and promote the construction of comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zones in Taiyuan, Datong and Yuncheng. Xinjiang proposes to promote the construction of border (cross-border) economic cooperation zones and accelerate the construction of comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zones in Urumqi, Kashgar, Alashankou and Ili. Chongqing will rely on China (Chongqing) Cross-border E-commerce Comprehensive Pilot Zone to successfully hold the China (Chongqing) Cross-border E-commerce Fair in 2023, and continue to expand the scale of digital trade in industrial Internet, smart city and other fields.