Original title: The scale has increased nearly 10 times in 5 years, accelerating the cultivation of independent brands——
Cross-border e-commerce has become the base camp of "true, excellent and beautiful" products
Recently, China (Ningbo) Export Cross-border E-commerce Expo was held in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. The expo was further expanded, with an exhibition area of 70,000 square meters, an increase of 250% over the previous edition. The picture shows the audience visiting the exhibition area of well-known brands exporting cross-border e-commerce at the Expo. Photo by He Yuankai (People's Vision)
In the Heihe area of the Heilongjiang Free Trade Zone, cross-border e-commerce merchants introduce products through live broadcasts. Photo by Weng Qiyu (People's Vision)
Cross-border e-commerce, temperament is becoming more and more "beautiful"——
In Qingdao, Shandong, the import scale grew rapidly during the "June 18" period this year, of which the proportion of upgraded and quality imported goods increased significantly;
In Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, hundreds of domestic brands appeared in a cross-border e-commerce fair, attracting overseas buyers from more than 20 countries and regions to negotiate;
In Longnan, Jiangxi, the cross-border e-commerce "front store and back warehouse + fast logistics" project has officially landed, and the distance between consumers "overseas shopping" global good things has been further shortened...
As a new format and new model, cross-border e-commerce is a growing foreign trade growth point. Experts said that since the beginning of this year, China's cross-border e-commerce has continued to maintain a high-speed growth momentum, and the brand effect has accelerated, providing strong support for stabilizing foreign trade. Next, foreign trade enterprises should be further supported to expand sales channels and cultivate their own brands through new formats and models such as cross-border e-commerce, so that China's cross-border e-commerce platforms and enterprises can become the base camp of more "true, excellent and beautiful" products, and promote the healthy and sustainable innovation and development of cross-border e-commerce.
Trading partners are located all over the world
At 5 p.m. on June 18, another batch of goods entered the park in Shandong Qingdao Cross-border E-commerce Industrial Park. "With this batch, the total number of cross-border e-commerce promotional activities in 'June 18' this year has exceeded 1.22 million." Chen Lei, head of customs affairs of Qingdao Cross-border E-commerce Industrial Park, said that the "June 18" promotional activity began at the end of May, and the commodity categories were richer than in previous years, and the unit volume and customer unit price of cosmetics and health products in actual orders were better than last year, and auto parts, sports and alcohol also achieved significant growth.
Chen Lei introduced that since the beginning of the year, Qingdao Cross-border E-commerce Industrial Park has relied on the port logistics advantages of Qingdao Port and the location advantages adjacent to Japan and South Korea, and the cross-border e-commerce business has developed rapidly, and there are currently many cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Vipshop, Tmall Global, Cainiao, and Jingdong gathered in the park, "It is expected that the business can achieve rapid growth in the second half of the year." ”
"Fast" is a distinctive feature of China's cross-border e-commerce development. Data show that at present, China's cross-border e-commerce trading partners are all over the world, with more than 100,000 subjects, more than 200,000 independent stations, and the import and export scale has increased nearly 10 times in 5 years, accounting for less than 1% of foreign trade five years ago to about 5% at present. In 2015, the first cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zone was set up in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, and 165 comprehensive pilot zones have been set up in 7 batches in the past eight years, covering 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities.
At the end of May, the Ministry of Commerce announced the evaluation results of the 2022 cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zone, and the evaluation results in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Qingdao and other places were "obvious". Sun Xudong, deputy head of the leading group for the construction of China (Hangzhou) Cross-border E-commerce Comprehensive Pilot Zone, introduced that in the past eight years, Hangzhou has formed 46 institutional innovation cases in 8 aspects, realizing the expansion of cross-border e-commerce import and export scale from 120 million yuan to more than 120 billion yuan, an increase of 1,000 times; cross-border e-commerce enterprises jumped from more than 200 to more than 55,000, an increase of about 275 times.
More places are speeding up the pace of development. On June 20, the 2023 Jiangxi Cross-border E-commerce Development Conference was held in Jiujiang City, at which 16 cross-border e-commerce projects were signed with a total amount of more than 1 billion yuan, involving cross-border e-commerce ecological industrial parks, cross-border digital trade, cross-border live broadcasting, cross-border e-commerce incubation and other fields.
According to the latest local data, in the first five months of this year, Jiangxi's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports totaled 69.517 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 55.1%, accounting for 22.8% of the total foreign trade imports and exports. Yu Wang Ying, director of the Department of Commerce of Jiangxi Province, said that Jiangxi will accelerate the cultivation of cross-border e-commerce industrial belts, develop cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones, cultivate leading enterprises, lay out and build overseas warehouses, strengthen financial support, improve development policies, and jointly build a "new highland" for cross-border e-commerce development with domestic and foreign cross-border e-commerce industry chain enterprises.
In Hebei, the cross-border e-commerce bonded warehouse of Jingdong (Tangshan) Foreign Trade Logistics Operation Center has officially opened in Caofeidian Comprehensive Bonded Zone. The project covers an area of about 20,000 square meters, and the annual import volume of cross-border e-commerce can reach 3 million to 5 million orders, which is expected to drive the growth of cross-border e-commerce import and export volume by 300 million US dollars.
The relevant person in charge of the Department of Commerce of Hebei Province said that Hebei is focusing on promoting the construction of Cainiao Center Warehouse, Jingdong Warehouse and Jingdong (Shijiazhuang) cross-border e-commerce projects in Caofeidian District, and improving the cross-border e-commerce retail import chain. At the same time, support policies and measures will be introduced to help introduce well-known platforms, payment institutions and leading enterprises, and improve the cross-border e-commerce industry chain and ecosystem.
The international recognition of independent brands has been enhanced
In the rapid development, cross-border e-commerce is accelerating the transformation and upgrading of traditional foreign trade enterprises, providing more high-quality products for global consumers, and the international recognition of independent brands continues to increase.
At Guangdong Yuanbao Times Home Furnishing Co., Ltd., workers are rushing to produce a batch of table and chair orders from Chile. "We are mainly engaged in high-grade solid wood furniture such as living room, dining room, bedroom, home office, etc., mainly docking in Europe, America, Southeast Asia, Latin America and other places." Yang Bin, the person in charge of the company, said that in recent years, from traditional agents to help sell furniture to self-operated cross-border e-commerce platform direct sales of furniture, the company has attracted more and more overseas consumers to buy furniture products online by building its own brand and optimizing the design for overseas customer needs, and the company's annual sales of cross-border e-commerce have exceeded 20 million yuan.
From "selling products" to "also selling brands", China's cross-border e-commerce exports have strong momentum. According to the Annual Report on China's Cross-border E-commerce Trade released by the General Administration of Customs on June 17, cross-border e-commerce exports exceeded 1.5 trillion yuan in 2022, an increase of 10.1%; Among the export commodities, clothing, shoes and bags accounted for 33.1%, mobile phones and other electronic products accounted for 17.1%, and home textile products accounted for 7.8%.
"As companies strengthen their global brand capacity-building, our results in expanding overseas markets are getting better and better." Zhuang Xiaoqing, person in charge of Fujian Yicheng Garment Technology Co., Ltd., introduced that the company has recently rushed to produce a batch of clothing exported overseas, this product can be plugged in with a charging treasure to achieve independent temperature control, is the company's own brand, these two years has been overseas explosion.
Zhuang Xiaoqing said that enterprises now no longer rely on the traditional foreign trade model of overseas merchants placing orders in the past, independent brands are becoming more and more favored by overseas consumers, B2C (business-to-person) sales continue to expand, about ninety percent of orders are currently completed through Amazon, Alibaba and other cross-border e-commerce platforms, and it is expected that the next sales volume will increase by more than 1 times.
From "going out" to "bringing in", China's cross-border e-commerce has built a display and trading platform for global good things, and has become a gathering place for authentic, high-quality and trendy goods. In Africa, coffee from Ethiopia, chili sauce from Rwanda, black tea from Kenya, chocolate from Ghana, cashew nuts from Tanzania... Now it is entering thousands of households in China through cross-border e-commerce platforms.
Hunan Changsha Feituo Information Technology Co., Ltd.'s e-commerce platform Kilimall was established in 2014, and Silas Musiyoka, a post-90s African guy, has been working on this China-Africa cross-border e-commerce platform for 5 years. He introduced that in Kilimall, nearly 3,000 young African entrepreneurs have opened their own small shops, with the help of this cross-border e-commerce platform, African good things not only enter the Chinese market, but also begin to enter the shopping carts of global consumers. "China's successful exploration in the field of e-commerce can help African countries fill the gaps in supply chain and technology, which is worth learning." Musiyoka said.
Create a good environment for innovation
Behind the vigorous development of cross-border e-commerce, there are enterprises working hard to innovate, and it is also inseparable from the environment of service innovation and support for innovation.
On June 12, the General Administration of Customs launched 16 measures to optimize the business environment, of which creating a good innovation environment and serving foreign trade innovation occupied an important position. Wu Haiping, Director of the Department of Comprehensive Business of the General Administration of Customs, introduced that in recent years, in view of the development trend and characteristics of cross-border e-commerce, Customs has introduced many customs clearance management systems different from traditional trade, and "tailor-made" has created a customs supervision model suitable for the characteristics of cross-border e-commerce, which has effectively promoted the healthy and sustainable development of cross-border e-commerce.
Focusing on the needs of enterprises, the 16 measures issued this time emphasize the orderly implementation of the comprehensive reform of cross-border e-commerce customs supervision, and study and improve the cross-border e-commerce online shopping bonded supervision system measures. Realize the function of electronic tax payment and facilitate enterprises to handle tax payment business online. In view of the difficulty of enterprise returns, optimize the import and export return measures of cross-border e-commerce goods, improve the function of upgrading the return center warehouse, pilot the cross-border e-commerce online shopping bonded retail import cross-customs return mode, and study and expand the cross-border e-commerce general export commodity cross-customs return pilot.
Recently, the electronic payment function of cross-border e-commerce retail import tax was successfully launched. After the function is launched, the electronic payment transaction of one tax invoice of enterprises takes a total of about 30 seconds from initiating the payment request to receiving the successful verification receipt from the customs, eliminating manual operations such as printing and transmitting paper vouchers and checking the verification tax forms one by one, and the whole process is shortened by 2-3 working days compared to before. At present, this function is piloted and promoted in Ningbo, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Huangpu, Chongqing, Chengdu and other customs.
"The biggest feeling is fast!" Wang Shilei, the relevant person in charge of the first batch of "early adopter" enterprises, Ningbo Yimei Risheng Trading Co., Ltd., said, "With the electronic payment of import taxes, direct online operation, I pay the tax, the customs can automatically verify, the tax payment time is faster, the customs clearance of goods is also fast, and the efficiency is greatly improved, which is of great help to our business development." ”
"Let enterprises run less errands and more data", and accelerate the optimization of the business environment in various places. Li Xingqian, director of the Department of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Commerce, said that in recent years, various cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones have actively promoted the construction of online comprehensive service platforms, and there are currently more than 60,000 cross-border e-commerce enterprises served by these platforms. Next, we will support and guide these comprehensive test areas to further optimize the functions of the service platform, guide overseas warehouse enterprises to connect to the comprehensive service platform, and strive to integrate customs clearance, taxation, finance, and overseas warehousing functions into one, so as to achieve "one-point access, one-stop" comprehensive services, so that convenient integrated services benefit all cross-border e-commerce enterprises.
"In addition, we will vigorously support foreign trade enterprises to expand sales channels and cultivate their own brands through new formats and models such as cross-border e-commerce." Li Xingqian said that he actively cooperated with the State Intellectual Property Office to accelerate the issuance of guidelines for cross-border e-commerce intellectual property protection, help cross-border e-commerce enterprises understand the intellectual property situation in the target market, do their homework in advance, exemplary protection of intellectual property rights in the field of cross-border e-commerce, put an end to counterfeit and shoddy products, and fully protect the legitimate rights and interests of global consumers. (Reporter Qiu Haifeng)
Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition