Cross-border e-commerce energizes trade

That direction has already been embraced by Best Inc, a Hangzhou-headquartered integrated supply chain and logistics solutions provider. It began to deliver bulkier and heavier items in Thailand in February.

It covers nationwide shipment of heavy parcels weighing up to 80 kilograms, meeting increasing demand online among Thai consumers for China's home appliances like fridges and TVs, and furniture like sofa sets.

As China has been working with 14 other partners to ratify the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement before the end of this year and push for it to take effect on Jan 1, 2022, Best's move will further support the growth of interregional trade, cross-border e-commerce and investment, said Johnny Chou, its chairman and CEO.

The company will, therefore, exploit new development opportunities.

Best has already benefited from growing business transactions generated by cross-border e-commerce. Supported by more than 5,000 overseas employees, it has established logistics network in five countries, including Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia, which are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a regional bloc. This helped Best to grow its parcel volume in the ASEAN region by a whopping 738 percent to 73.59 million parcels in 2020.

In Thailand and Vietnam alone, Best's parcel volume surged by 612.8 percent and 798.2 percent, respectively.

Elsewhere, although the COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on revenues of overseas travel firms, airlines and exhibition organizers, the same period also saw business-to-business or B2B firms, and e-tailers pushing China's cross-border e-commerce sector into many export businesses.

This diversification happened at a brisk pace, thanks to the technological prowess－complete industrial chains and support facilities－already accumulated in the field, said Li Kuiwen, director-general of the General Administration of Customs' statistics and analysis department.

Agreed Wang Xiaoming, a researcher at the Institutes of Science and Development of the Beijing-based Chinese Academy of Sciences. "Cross-border e-commerce business is not only another boon to stimulate consumption of quality products but a solution that can strengthen the dual-circulation development paradigm in the field of trade."

Dual-circulation refers to China's new development paradigm where domestic and overseas markets reinforce each other, with the domestic market as the mainstay.

Leaders of foreign businesses said China's cross-border e-commerce boom will also help them reach more families in the country's lower-tier cities.

"With the magic of cross-border e-commerce, we are finding that we can reach consumers throughout China, no matter where they are. That was not possible a decade ago," said Tara McCarthy, CEO of the Irish Food Board, or Bord Bia, the agency which promotes Ireland's food products.

China's growing demand for meat products and growth of its cross-border e-commerce sector are expected to make the country Ireland's second-largest destination for exports of foodstuffs and agricultural products after the United Kingdom, over the next several years.

All cities and regions that host free trade zones, comprehensive areas of cross-border e-commerce, comprehensive bonded areas, and select bonded logistics centers are now eligible to start pilot programs of cross-border retail imports, according to a notice published by a group of government departments, including the Ministry of Commerce and the National Development and Reform Commission, in early April.

In these pilot areas, companies receive preferential tax policies, such as exemption of value-added tax and consumption tax on retail exports and reduction of corporate income tax rates.

Pilot cities that join the program can conduct more convenient modes of imports like "online shopping bonded import mode", whereby imported retail goods can be temporarily stored at the bonded warehouse before being delivered to customers.

Before this, China had approved five batches of 105 cross-border e-commerce pilot zones since the first such zone was set up in Hangzhou in 2015.

Import and export businesses aside, the organizers of the four-day first China International Consumer Products Expo, which began in Haikou, the capital of Hainan province, on Friday, also established platforms for cross-border e-commerce and livestreaming during the event, said Zhu Xiaoliang, director-general of the department of market operation and consumption promotion at the Ministry of Commerce.