E-commerce spreads its cross-border wings

To further advance the opening-up drive and transform and upgrade foreign trade, the State Council, China's Cabinet, announced on July 13 that comprehensive cross-border e-commerce experimental zones would be set up in 22 cities.

They include: Beijing; Hohhot, capital of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region; Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province; Nanning, capital of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region; Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province; and Yiwu in Zhejiang. Customs clearance procedures will be simplified for e-commerce enterprises.

This move further demonstrates China's belief that e-commerce is the way in which international trade will develop.

Since 2015, China has set up 13 cross-border e-commerce experimental zones. Hangzhou, home to e-commerce giant Alibaba, was the first such zone, and its trade volume in cross-border e-commerce has risen from more than 100 million yuan in 2014 to more than 60 billion yuan last year, with the scale of the industry increasing nearly 500 times.

Cross-border e-commerce has become a new engine for Hangzhou's economic growth and industrial upgrading.

The network of experimental cross-border e-commerce zones formed nationwide lays a solid foundation for them to become a major trade channel, which will boost not only China's exports but also imports to meet the demands of domestic consumers.

Most of the experimental zones are linked with Europe by regular freight rail services, and cross-border e-commerce will boost trade between China and Europe, as well as countries along the Silk Road Economic Belt.

The development of cross-border e-commerce in China will help to promote the balanced development of trade globally, bringing new opportunities to more countries and enterprises, while promoting China's international trade.

Hu, from Danyuan Information Technology, said, "The launch of an e-commerce zone in Yiwu will definitely prompt cross-border online trading firms like us to speed up our layout overseas, prompting us to set up more warehouses to handle exports."

He added that customs clearance efficiency is expected to be greatly improved, significantly reducing the costs for trading companies such as Danyuan.

Xu Ting contributed to this story.