21 prefecture-level cities in Guangdong achieve full coverage of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test areas Chaozhou Jieyang was approved

Nandu News The development of new foreign trade formats has accelerated, the scale of cross-border e-commerce has grown, and policy dividends have been continuously released. Recently, the State Council issued the Reply on Agreeing to Establish Cross-border E-commerce Comprehensive Pilot Zones in 27 Cities and Regions including Ordos (hereinafter referred to as the "Reply"). Eight prefecture-level cities in Guangdong Province have been approved to set up cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones (hereinafter referred to as cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test zones), and 21 prefecture-level cities in the province have achieved full coverage of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test areas.

In June 2021, the executive meeting of the State Council deliberated and adopted the Opinions on Accelerating the Development of New Formats and Models of Foreign Trade, which clearly proposed to solidly promote the construction of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test zones. Since 2015, the State Council has set up 105 cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test zones in five batches, covering 30 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government. Guangdong Province ranked first in the number of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test areas. In the latest batch, the cities of Shanwei, Chaozhou and Jieyang in eastern Guangdong were approved.

Nandu reporter combed and found that for the development of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test area, the Ministry of Commerce, the General Administration of Customs, and the tax department have introduced a series of support measures, the most important of which is four aspects: first, the cross-border e-commerce retail export "no ticket tax exemption" policy, export exemption from value-added tax and consumption tax; second, cross-border e-commerce retail export enterprise income tax approval collection policy; third, customs clearance facilitation policy; fourth, relaxation of import supervision. (For details, see Nandu report "Cross-border E-commerce Comprehensive Pilot Zone Expands 27 More!") Guangdong has taken another 'national first'")

Guangdong Province is the largest province in foreign trade. According to data from the Provincial Department of Commerce, from 2016 to 2020, Guangdong's cross-border e-commerce import and export volume increased from 22.8 billion yuan to 172.6 billion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of 65.9%, ranking first in the country for seven consecutive years.

Guangdong's regional development is unbalanced, and there is still a gap between the economic level of the Pearl River Delta and the northeast and west of Guangdong. Guangdong is bordered by the sea in the east, the Pearl River Delta in the west, a hundred-year-old commercial port, overseas Chinese all over the world, and a strong business culture. Light industrial categories such as shoes, toys, ceramics, and wedding dresses are complete, driving the development of export-oriented economy.

In recent years, the epidemic has made the global supply chain dysfunctional, accelerating the change in supply and demand. Online cross-border business, the opening of independent stations and overseas warehouses have become the new normal, and cross-border e-commerce is reshaping the industrial belt of the "world factory".

Chaozhou Municipal Bureau of Statistics in January data disclosed that the city's total import and export of goods in the whole year was 24.147 billion yuan, an increase of 32.7% year-on-year, and an average growth of 5.8% in two years. The main export products maintained good growth, of which ceramic products, food, mechanical and electrical products, shoes and boots, clothing and clothing accessories, plastic products and other commodities exports increased by 32.9%, 18.5%, 36.8%, 21.7%, 22.6% and 17.4% respectively year-on-year.

According to the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Commerce in Jieyang City", the city's e-commerce has developed rapidly, and Jieyang has become a national e-commerce demonstration city, cultivating 35 "China Taobao Towns" and 121 "China Taobao Villages". In September 2020, the city's first cross-border e-commerce park was put into use, and the proportion of imports and exports of private enterprises increased from 78.9% in 2015 to 85.4%, accounting for more than 70% of exports to emerging markets.

On December 2, 2021, the official website of the Guangdong Provincial Government released the "Several Policies and Measures on Promoting the High-quality Development of Cross-border E-commerce", proposing to guide enterprises to make good use of cross-border e-commerce retail export value-added tax, consumption tax exemption policy and income tax approval and collection methods. Actively promote the improvement of cross-border e-commerce B2B export VALUE-added tax and income tax policies, and provide tax-related counseling personalized services for enterprises that carry out cross-border e-commerce export overseas warehouse business.

In terms of strengthening the construction of cross-border e-commerce industrial parks, the above measures propose to formulate standards for the construction of cross-border e-commerce industrial parks, build 30 cross-border e-commerce industrial parks with a certain scale, and the number of settled and service enterprises has reached 100,000. The park focuses on the introduction of service-oriented enterprises such as customs clearance, payment and settlement, tax insurance, software development, and big data analysis, to build a strong cross-border e-commerce industry ecology and provide one-stop services for the development of cross-border e-commerce.

"Cross-border e-commerce is a new form of foreign trade with the fastest development speed, the greatest potential and the strongest driving effect, and it is still in a period of rapid development." The establishment of a number of new comprehensive pilot zones and the vigorous development of new formats and models such as cross-border e-commerce are conducive to stimulating the vitality of foreign trade subjects, improving the efficiency of foreign trade operations, stabilizing the supply chain of the foreign trade industry chain, and realizing the integration of industrial digitalization and trade digitalization. The person in charge of the Department of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Commerce recently said when interpreting the "Reply".

People's Daily reported in July 2021 that Ren Hongbin, assistant minister of the Ministry of Commerce, reminded that from an international perspective, the global epidemic situation is still grim and there is uncertainty in economic recovery. From the domestic point of view, China's foreign trade enterprises are facing four major difficulties, one is the low efficiency and high price of international shipping; the second is that the fluctuation of the RMB exchange rate has increased, and enterprises have appeared the phenomenon of "not daring to pick up orders and not making profits for exports"; third, the price of raw materials has risen, increasing the cost of enterprises; fourth, it is difficult to recruit workers and labor is expensive in some areas.

According to customs statistics, the scale of Cross-border e-commerce in China has increased by nearly 10 times in five years, and the import and export volume will reach 1.98 trillion yuan in 2021, an increase of 15%.

In addition to Guangdong Province, the cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zone has also achieved full coverage in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. The "Reply" requires that the Ministry of Commerce should take the lead in overall coordination, follow-up analysis and guidance services, establish and improve the assessment and withdrawal mechanism, and regularly carry out assessments to promote the survival of the fittest.

Written by: Nandu reporter Huang Shulun