Cross-border e-commerce opens new opportunities in foreign trade

More business-to-consumer businesses will emerge in China's cross-border e-commerce sector which is an area of focus in foreign trade, industry experts said.

"With the improvement of technology and supply chain, the proportion of B2C business will increase in the cross-border e-commerce industry," said Barbara Shi, vice-president of Digital Giants in NielsenIQ, a global company for measurement and data analysis.

According to research by NielsenIQ, the application of new information technology together with the strengthening of China's digital infrastructure provides a good industrial foundation and ecological environment for cross-border e-commerce. With the gradual integration of emerging technologies such as big data and internet of things with cross-border e-commerce research and development and production, logistics and distribution, precision marketing and other links, China's cross-border e-commerce has gained a leading edge in technology.

At a time when global manufacturing supply chains have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and international production capacity has yet to be restored, China's stable supply chain provides opportunities for sellers to expand in the international market. In July this year, the General Office of the State Council issued its Opinions on Accelerating the Development of New Forms and Models of Foreign Trade, further providing favorable policies for cross-border e-commerce.

Global collaboration also brings huge opportunities for those enterprises to expand internationally. According the Ministry of Commerce, by May of 2020, the Chinese government had signed documents on "Belt and Road Cooperation" with 138 countries and 30 international organizations, and established long-term bilateral e-commerce cooperation mechanisms with more than 20 countries, including Vietnam, New Zealand, Brazil and Italy. Moreover, the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership plays a positive role in promoting the upgrading of export e-commerce industry and the extension of trade radius.

Shi said she believes compared with traditional foreign trade, cross-border e-commerce is equipped with more advantages such as simplifying trade links and greatly increasing trade efficiency, which will drive the restructuring of global value creation factors and encourage traditional foreign trade enterprises to transform and upgrade.

The signing of the RCEP as well as the "Belt and Road" strategy provide a positive and favorable developing environment for China's cross-border export e-commerce, which helps a number of Chinese brands gain a great opportunity to go global.

Wang Hao contributed to this story.