Policy/Index Barometer
1. "Asian Digital Economy Report": China's digital economy is the largest in scale, and cross-border digital governance issues still need to be resolved
On December 21, the Boao Forum for Asia released the Asian Digital Economy Report. According to the report, China's digital economy is far ahead, with a scale of US$7.47 trillion in 2022. Japan is in second place with $2.37 trillion. South Korea is in third place with $952.3 billion. In addition, India, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia and other countries have a digital economy of more than $100 billion.
In addition, the report emphasizes that the system of international digital governance rules such as cross-border data flow has not yet been established and unified, and the digital governance pattern is fragmented, regionalized, and fragmented. In particular, there are various security threats such as personal information leakage, digital platform monopoly, and cyber attacks in cross-border digital circulation and transactions. The level of digital governance and supervision varies greatly among countries, and there is a lack of clear and unified governance rules and regulatory policies.
2. From January 1, 2024, China will adjust the import and export tariffs on some commodities
From January 1, 2024, the mainland will implement a provisional import tariff rate lower than the most-favored-nation tax rate for 1,010 goods, so as to accelerate the innovation and development of advanced manufacturing industry, and reduce the export tariff of high-purity aluminum in order to promote the development of the new materials industry.
Among them, the prohibited export part includes: "satellites used by the mainland and their carrier radio remote control telemetry coding and encryption technology" under the transportation equipment manufacturing industry, and "related satellite data encryption technology" under the telecommunications and other information transmission service industries: 1. Confidentiality principles, schemes and route design technologies; 2. Encryption and decryption software, hardware, and Beidou satellite navigation system information transmission encryption technology.
The part of the restricted export commodities involves: "3D printing technology (No. 183506X), control points: 'casting, forging and milling integration' metal 3D printing key technology", "application technology of construction machinery (No. 183507X), control points: loaders, bulldozers, excavators and other vibration and noise reduction, intelligent control and other research and development achievements application technology", "UAV technology (No. 184012X)", "laser technology (No. 184013X)" (note: titanium media) "Overseas Reference" is not fully listed, please refer to the "Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited and Restricted by China for Export" for details)
3. The United States is considering raising tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles
On December 21, foreign media reported that the U.S. government is considering raising tariffs on some Chinese goods, including electric vehicles, to support and protect the U.S. environmental energy industry against parity with Chinese exports. While the Biden administration has largely retained the Trump-era tariffs on about $300 billion in Chinese goods, including the 25 percent tariff on Chinese cars, the White House and other agencies are discussing the tariffs again with the aim of completing an assessment of the tariffs early in the new year, according to people familiar with the matter. However, it is understood that compared with the European market, the current export volume of Chinese car companies in the US market is small.
Popular Industry Observations
1. Fashion and accessories have become the most popular gifts in Brazil this year
A new study from MField reveals gifting and shopping trends for Brazilian consumers in 2023. According to the MField survey, about 74% of respondents intend to buy gifts during this festive season. The most popular shopping categories are fashion and accessories (42.1%), cosmetics (27.5%), footwear (26.1%). The most interested e-commerce platforms for Brazilian consumers are: Amazon (60.6%), Shopee (36.7%), Mercado Libre (34.3%), SHEIN (26%), Magazine Luiza (22.2%), Americanas (18.5%) and Casas Bahia (8.7%).
2. It is expected that the global EV growth rate will slow down in the future, and the sales of BYD's pure electric models in Q4 will surpass Tesla
On December 18, market research agency Counterpoint Research released the latest report pointing out that global passenger car pure electric vehicle (BEV) sales in the third quarter of 2023 increased by 29% year-on-year. Tesla, BYD Auto, and Volkswagen are the best-selling BEV groups. Among them, in the third quarter, BYD (excluding Denza) has caught up with Tesla, and the market share of both is currently 17%. The agency expects BYD Auto (excluding Denza) to surpass Tesla in sales in the fourth quarter to become the world's No. 1.
According to the research report of Yide Futures, global electric vehicle shipments are expected to be close to 14 million units in 2023, a year-on-year increase of nearly 37.36%, and are expected to reach 18 million units in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 28.85%.
3. AliExpress announced the top ten best-selling categories in 2023
In 2023, AliExpress AliExpress's ten popular categories will be announced, in addition to familiar pet supplies, wigs, mother and baby and camping supplies, household goodies such as sweeping robots, mechanical keyboards and electric blankets have also become "must-buy things" for overseas consumers with the concentrated outbreak of overseas "lazy economy" and home attributes, including coffee machines, fishing gear and children's toys.
4. Gates looks forward to 2024: AI accelerates innovation and nuclear energy goes to market
Recently, Bill Gates published his predictions for 2024 through an open letter. He predicts that by 2024 and beyond, we will see many new innovations enter the market – even in very complex areas such as nuclear energy. He said advances in AI will broadly improve global health and accelerate new discoveries, while fostering innovation in both developed and developing countries.
At the same time, when solar or wind energy is insufficient, it needs to be supplemented by more reliable energy sources, including nuclear energy. "Among carbon-free energy sources, nuclear is the only one that can supply electricity almost anywhere on Earth, day and night, and seasonally, and its reliability has been widely proven," he wrote. ”
Platform dynamics at a glance
1. Shopee promotes efficient management of store functions
On December 19th, Shopee opened a new model of multi-operation (PFF), which will help sellers manage their stores more efficiently, save operating costs, and improve store conversion.
3PFPF (Tripartite Warehouse, One Store, Multiple Transportation) stores can be associated with 1 cross-border warehouse and 1 overseas local warehouse at the same time to correspond to cross-border and local shipping addresses. 3. Under the PFPFF store, the order route will be transferred to the cross-border inventory when the local inventory consumption is 0. However, it is not possible to change the warehouse origin after the order has been generated.
The PFF model has three major advantages:
1. Comment sharing. The sales/evaluations of different sites on the same platform can be shared; When a product is released to multiple sites around the world, merchants can see the global sales of products on the platform, the sales in different markets, and the evaluation of different markets.
2. Permission management. The authority of the parent account and sub-account is split, and the corporate governance is more secure. Through the way of sub-and master accounts, different roles and permissions are assigned, different stores are managed, and the activity log is clearly displayed, and the store operation is traceable to ensure the safety of the store.
3. One store for multiple shipments. Core advantages: local goods, local first; If there is no goods locally but there are goods across the border, then send them across the border.
2. Changes in the fees of Amazon's European station, 5 fees will rise
A few days ago, Amazon released the cost changes of the European station, and this adjustment is very unfavorable to the sellers of the European station - there is no commission reduction for the clothing category of the American station; FBA delivery fees have not only not been reduced, but some sites have risen; in addition, various storage fees such as monthly storage fees, storage utilization surcharges, overage inventory surcharges, return processing fees, etc. have increased across the board.
After a number of fee price increases, Amazon also gave a little benefit, including expanding the preferential benefits of FBA new products in Europe, and providing an average of 10% sales commission rebate for ASIN sales that meet the requirements; FBA rates for low-priced items continue to be available for all marketplaces in Europe, including £10 for the UK, €11 for Germany, €12 for France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, SEK 140 for Sweden, and PLN 55 for Poland (including VAT), with eligible items automatically receiving the low price.
Overall, logistics costs will continue to rise in 2024, and sellers need to try to optimize packaging and other things to adapt to changes.
3、TikTok、Temu纷纷定下2024年GMV目标
The development of TikTok's e-commerce business is becoming the growth engine of Bytes. According to foreign media sources, ByteDance's revenue in 2023 will increase by 30% year-on-year to $110 billion. This also means that Byte's revenue in 2023 may surpass Tencent and approach Meta. The analysis pointed out that more than 30% of the revenue growth rate is inseparable from the contribution of TikTok's e-commerce business.
At the same time, TikTok e-commerce has set a GMV target of $50 billion for 2024, which has more than doubled compared to the target figure of $20 billion this year. It is understood that at present, the GMV of TikTok e-commerce in Southeast Asia has exceeded 13 billion US dollars, of which Indonesia has exceeded 4 billion US dollars and the Thai market has exceeded 3.5 billion US dollars.
Previously, Temu, which is also one of the "Four Tigers Going to Sea", set a GMV target of 30 billion yuan in 2024, which is also double the GMV (14 billion US dollars) this year.
4. Meikeduo shares suggestions for self-delivery and overseas warehouses in the Latin American e-commerce market
Recently, Meikeduo shared its annual consumption trends and category insights in Latin America at its official event, and conducted an in-depth analysis of high-potential categories such as consumer electronics, home office, clothing & sports outdoor, auto and motorcycle parts, and children's toys from two perspectives: self-delivery selection and overseas warehouse selection. Meikeduo pointed out that the self-delivery business is highly flexible, and sellers need to have agile development capabilities, and use rich product supply to achieve sales growth as much as possible in large-volume and high-growth categories. The overseas warehouse business tests the seller's product planning ability, and tries to choose blue ocean products with low supply, low penetration rate and high growth.
Emerging market dynamics
1. South Africa launched a bidding for 7.6GW new energy power projects
South Africa's Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy has issued three RFPs to independent power producers to launch tenders for power projects with a total capacity of 7,615MW to address power shortages. The three tenders are the seventh round of South Africa's Renewable Energy Independent Power Generation Procurement Programme (REIPPP), the first round of the Natural Gas Independent Power Generation Procurement Programme (GASIPPPP) and the second round of the Battery Storage Independent Power Generation Procurement Program (BESIPPPP), which are for 1.8GW of photovoltaic power generation and 3.2GW of onshore wind power projects, 2GW of natural gas power generation projects and 615MW of battery storage projects.
2. Thailand has launched the second phase of electric vehicle incentives and has implemented an electric vehicle manufacturing plan
The Thai government has launched the second phase of the electric vehicle incentive measure (EV3.5), and plans to allocate 34 billion baht (about 6.938 billion yuan) by 2027 to implement the electric vehicle manufacturing plan. The new EV 3.5 program will be implemented for a period of four years starting on January 2, 2024. At the same time, the Thai government will also invest an additional 7.1 billion baht (about 1.449 billion yuan) to incentivize consumers to buy electric vehicles, with subsidies of 5,000 to 100,000 baht for each new car, and stimulate the development of the local market through multi-pronged measures such as reducing import tariffs and consumption taxes.
According to reports, Thailand's Office of Industrial Economics said that the second phase of the electric vehicle incentive measures aims to grow Thailand's electric vehicle production to 359,000 units in 2024, a 4.3-fold increase from this year. According to Thailand's official statistics, in the first 11 months of 2023, the number of newly registered electric vehicles in the country was 67,000.
3. Saudi EVIQ plans to launch 5,000 electric vehicle charging stations by 2030
EVIQ, an electric vehicle infrastructure company newly formed joint venture between Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Saudi Electricity Company (SEC), has announced the opening of a research and development (R&D) center in Riyadh. The center will be used to test a range of chargers and software in preparation for the subsequent rollout of charging stations. It will also serve as a hub for the development of charger expertise to meet the changing needs of the Saudi electric vehicle market.
In line with Saudi Arabia's sustainability goals, EVIQ is on track to deploy 5,000 charging stations in 1,000 strategic locations by 2030.
The goal of installing 50,000 charging stations across the country by 2025 set in the Kingdom's Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Development Initiative (SEVCIDI), launched in 2021, will help Saudi Arabia achieve an important transformation in the automotive industry.
4. Thailand Luckin claimed 2 billion from China Luckin
According to the Chinese Overseas Chinese Network, citing Thai headlines, on the morning of the 19th, the Thai Royal 50R group (50R group) formally submitted a lawsuit to the court, asking the court to sentence China Luckin Coffee to compensate for economic losses of 10 billion baht, which the court has accepted. At noon on December 20, Luckin Coffee posted through Sina Weibo that the situation has yet to be verified about the claim of 10 billion baht by Thailand's fake Luckin. Among them, the issue of "trademark squatting" has attracted much attention.
The report released by the Overseas Trademark Protection Committee of the China Trademark Association disclosed the trademark monitoring of the association's 313 member companies in 189 countries and regions around the world. According to the report, in 2022, 7% of member companies suspected of being preemptively registered trademarks overseas. Among the 22 well-known enterprises that have been monitored to have a record of trademark squatting, each company has been registered in about 1.8 countries/regions on average, up from 0.8 countries/regions in 2021. In recent years, well-known domestic trademarks such as "Master Bao", "Chayan Yuese", "Wang Zhihe", "Lao Gan Ma" and "Qiaqia" have been preemptively registered abroad, which has affected the layout of these brands overseas.
Trends in the service ecosystem
1. 85% of container shipping companies have suspended the Red Sea route, affecting the automobile and food supply chains
A number of international shipping companies have successively announced the suspension of the Red Sea route, and have said that due to the increase in transportation costs caused by the diversion, the freight quotation has been raised. The world's shipping giant Maersk Group of Denmark announced that due to the blockage of transportation in the Red Sea waters, it will impose a transport interruption surcharge on 27 routes from the 21st, and will add another surcharge for these routes from next year. At the same time, the French container carrier CMA CGM Group and the German shipping company Hapag-Lloyd also said on the 22nd that they would charge additional freight.
As of the 20th of this month, 113 ships have recently been diverted from the Suez Canal.
S&P Global Market Intelligence Supply Chain Research believes that the most impactful industry is the automotive industry. About 40% of imported cars and about 20% of auto parts in Asia are transported through this route, and these goods are delayed. European food exports to Asia will also be affected, including pork, dairy products and butter, among others.
At present, the global cargo transportation network is constantly improving, which is conducive to enterprises to meet the challenges of transportation. It has been previously reported that some companies have switched to a combination of air and sea transportation in order to deliver goods safely and on time.
2. Create a new channel for "going to sea", and open special trains for new energy vehicles in many places
On December 18, the China-Europe train loaded with 55 containers and 110 new energy vehicles departed from Harbin International Container Center Station. This is this year, Heilongjiang Province has opened another China-Europe train line for domestic new energy commodity vehicles after the opening of the China-Europe train line for domestic commercial cars and second-hand cars. Since the beginning of this year, it has been boosted by the demand for new energy vehicles going overseas. China-Europe Express (Tianjin), China-Europe Express (Yuxinou), China-Europe Express (Xi'an-Tashkent), China-Europe Express (Qilu) and other special trains for new energy vehicles have been launched one after another. In the first half of 2023, China's new energy vehicle sales reached 3.747 million units. The railway sector transported more than 475,000 vehicles.
3. YTO Airlines opened a special line from Hangzhou to Dubai
On December 18, the Hangzhou-Dubai all-freighter route was put into operation, and the route was operated by YTO Airlines, with three flights per week initially planned.
Since the beginning of this year, Hangzhou Airport has opened cargo routes to Billund, Chicago, Budapest, Amsterdam, Mexico City and other cargo routes, and as of November, international cargo volume increased by 3.7% year-on-year. Driven by e-commerce activities such as "Black Friday" in December, the single-day cargo volume of Hangzhou Airport East International Cargo Station hit a new high, with the highest daily cargo volume reaching 696 tons on December 8.
The opening of the Hangzhou-Dubai all-cargo route will further fill the gap between Hangzhou and the Middle East air cargo routes, build an efficient and convenient air channel for economic and trade exchanges with the Middle East, help "Zhejiang goods go to Zhejiang", and promote Zhejiang's high-level opening up and high-quality development.
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