Pragmatic measures, multi-dimensional efforts, cross-border e-commerce "accelerated running"

After five years of rapid growth, how to maintain the good momentum of cross-border e-commerce development and enhance the competitiveness of foreign trade has become the focus of policy. The reporter of the Economic Information Daily noted that since the beginning of the year, relevant central departments and local governments have successively introduced measures to meet the development needs of the industry, from reducing the export return cost of cross-border e-commerce enterprises to improving the logistics infrastructure for cross-border e-commerce development, and then to supporting enterprises to build independent stations, so as to promote cross-border e-commerce to "accelerate" and enhance the overall competitiveness of foreign trade.

Some enterprises that laid out cross-border e-commerce in the early days ushered in a "good start". According to a research report of AliExpress, a cross-border e-commerce platform, nearly 80% of merchants think that the overall cross-border export situation in China will be stable and positive in 2023. With the advantages of online trading and short trading chain, cross-border e-commerce is favored by foreign trade enterprises.

According to customs statistics, the import and export of cross-border e-commerce in China has increased nearly tenfold in five years. In 2022, China's cross-border e-commerce import and export was 2.11 trillion yuan, up 9.8%, which was 2.1 percentage points higher than the overall foreign trade import and export growth rate.

The steady development of cross-border e-commerce is inseparable from national policy support and exploration by all parties. At present, China's cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test area has been expanded to 165, covering 31 provinces, including supporting overseas warehouses to optimize market layout, optimizing the supervision mode for cross-border e-commerce export overseas warehouses, and promoting cross-border e-commerce retail import return center warehouses and B2B export supervision mode, which have been continuously introduced, creating favorable conditions for cross-border e-commerce development.

While the overall industry is growing rapidly, some foreign trade enterprises encounter difficulties in developing cross-border e-commerce business, such as high return and exchange costs, long logistics cycle, lack of professionals, and difficulty in opening up markets. Aiming at the hot issues concerned by foreign trade enterprises, relevant departments and local governments have increased their deployment. The the State Council executive meeting held on January 28th proposed to promote the further development of cross-border e-commerce and overseas warehouses. Subsequently, the Ministry of Finance, the General Administration of Customs and the State Administration of Taxation jointly issued the "Announcement on Tax Policies for Export Returned Goods in cross-border electronic commerce" on February 1 to reduce the export return costs of cross-border e-commerce enterprises.

Earlier, when deploying the work of stabilizing foreign trade this year, the General Administration of Customs proposed to promote the B2B export supervision mode of cross-border e-commerce retail import and return center warehouses and introduce measures to support enterprises to set up export overseas warehouses. The Ministry of Commerce said that it is necessary to promote the further development of new formats such as cross-border e-commerce and overseas warehouses, make full use of digital means to tap the trade potential and drive small and medium-sized micro-foreign trade enterprises to export.