Cross border e-commerce overseas warehouses activate new momentum for foreign trade development

Overseas warehouses, as a new type of foreign trade infrastructure supporting the development of cross-border e-commerce, are an important component of China's new business model and mode of foreign trade. They are also a key lever to cope with the restructuring of the global economic and trade pattern and enhance the resilience of foreign trade. In recent years, with the continuous release of policy dividends and the active layout of enterprises, overseas warehouses have achieved rapid development and led China's new foreign trade formats to accelerate transformation and upgrading, effectively hedging external risk shocks, and becoming a new engine for promoting high-quality development of foreign trade.

Under the dual effects of policy empowerment and market driving, China's cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouses have achieved rapid expansion in scale and continuous optimization in layout, becoming a new engine for high-quality development of foreign trade, with significant results and stable momentum. One is steady growth in scale and continuous improvement in global layout. As of now, China has over 1800 overseas warehouses dedicated to serving cross-border e-commerce, with a total area of over 22 million square meters, widely distributed in countries and regions such as the United States, Germany, Vietnam, Thailand, etc., building a global warehousing network. Faced with multiple countries tightening their "small exemption" policies, overseas warehouses are accelerating their diversified layout, with emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Russia becoming the growth core. By 2025, the overseas warehouse area in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa will continue to increase, with a total area of over 2 million square meters in Southeast Asia and a single warehouse scale comparable to Europe; At the same time, we will collaborate with overseas parks such as Taizhong Luoyong Industrial Park to create an integrated system of "warehousing+industry" and enhance the efficiency of industrial chain collaboration. Secondly, the momentum continues to be released, and the supporting role of foreign trade is highlighted. As a growth point in foreign trade, cross-border e-commerce will increase its import and export volume from 1.69 trillion yuan to 2.75 trillion yuan from 2020 to 2025, with an average annual compound growth rate of over 10%. The growth rate in 2025 will be 0.8 percentage points higher than the national foreign trade. Overseas warehouses are expanding in sync with the industry and entering the fast lane of development. The United States Joint Market Research Institute predicts that the compound annual growth rate of e-commerce warehousing will reach 18.4% in 2032, indicating a vast market space. The third is the synergy of industries, and the vitality of exports continues to increase. Relying on the advantages of advanced manufacturing industry, China's B2B cross-border e-commerce leads in international market share, driving the acceleration of overseas warehouse exports. By 2025, the export of cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouses in Shandong Province will reach 5.59 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.1 times, becoming a benchmark for local foreign trade growth and fully demonstrating the key role of overseas warehouses in stabilizing foreign trade and expanding markets.

As a key hub for cross-border trade, overseas warehouses have played an important role in continuously improving their service efficiency from three dimensions: cost, performance, and industry synergy. In terms of cost reduction, enterprises can bulk stock goods to overseas warehouses through methods such as full container sea freight and China Europe freight trains, which reduces logistics costs by 60% -80% compared to single item direct mail. They can also enjoy lower value-added tax rates in the destination country, reduce customs clearance delays, and effectively alleviate the cost pressure on enterprises. In terms of improving the ability to fulfill contracts, local warehousing is combined with local fulfillment, compressing cross-border delivery time from 15-30 days to 1-3 days. Companies such as Cainiao and SF Express have achieved efficient fulfillment of contracts in their overseas warehouses, significantly improving the shopping experience of overseas consumers and enhancing the market competitiveness of China's cross-border e-commerce. In terms of service extension, overseas warehouses are upgrading from single warehousing to comprehensive services, integrating warehouse and distribution with various value-added services. China National Building Materials Dubai Overseas Warehouse has become a regional distribution and trading center for new energy vehicles and other products, promoting the collaborative empowerment of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain and helping China's advantageous industries go global.

The rapid development of overseas warehouses has injected strong momentum into China's foreign trade, but facing the complex and severe international environment, its high-quality development still faces severe challenges. One is the uneven layout. At present, overseas warehouse resources are mainly concentrated in mature markets in Europe and America, with insufficient coverage density in emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. The network layout is scattered, making it difficult to effectively seize growth opportunities in these regions and restricting market expansion space. Secondly, financing difficulties are prominent. The construction and operation of overseas warehouses belong to heavy asset investment, with a large amount of capital occupation. Enterprises generally face the problems of narrow financing channels and high financing costs. Among them, small and medium-sized business entities have weak financial strength and more significant capital turnover pressure, which restricts their large-scale development. The third is the intensification of compliance risks. There are significant differences in tax collection and management, customs supervision, environmental standards and other policies among countries, and frequent adjustments and stricter supervision have not only continuously increased the operating costs of enterprises, but also made it more difficult for enterprises to prevent and control compliance risks, bringing uncertainty to the stable operation of overseas warehouses. Faced with the multiple challenges mentioned above, it is urgent to promote the improvement, expansion, optimization and upgrading of overseas warehouses, activate new driving forces for foreign trade development, and shape new advantages in international competition.

Optimize global layout and expand into emerging markets. Accelerate the layout of overseas warehouses in emerging markets such as ASEAN, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa, deepen cooperation with local logistics companies, and strengthen the coverage of warehousing networks in key countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Improve end-to-end logistics services such as warehousing, sorting, and distribution, achieve local stocking and shipping, reduce operating costs, and avoid tariff risks. Strengthen the coordinated planning of overseas warehouses and parks, enhance the correlation and market complementarity with the host country's resource endowment, industrial structure, and economic characteristics, create distinctive development advantages, and avoid homogeneous competition. Strengthen the analysis and evaluation of external factors such as the macro environment, business environment, and industry market of the host country, improve risk warning and prevention mechanisms, and provide guarantees for the stable operation of overseas warehouses.

Strengthen financial support and solve financing difficulties. Build a diversified financial service system covering the entire chain of operation, sales, and logistics, innovate special credit, supply chain finance, financing leasing and other products, improve financing evaluation mechanisms based on operational data such as enterprise order volume and performance time, and effectively alleviate the financial pressure on enterprises. Improve the facilitation of RMB settlement of cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouses, and focus on supporting overseas warehouse enterprises to jointly build a national layout of the "the Belt and Road". Optimize financial services for the differentiated stocking needs of B2B merchants, small and medium-sized sellers, and other warehouse users, strengthen collaboration and linkage with tax and customs departments, and effectively improve the efficiency of enterprise capital turnover through one-stop services of "tax refund+financing".

Deepen the integration of green technology and promote transformation and upgrading. Accelerate the digital and intelligent transformation of overseas warehouses, promote models such as big data intelligent warehousing and shared intelligent warehouses, encourage small and medium-sized enterprises to jointly build and share intelligent overseas warehouses, and effectively reduce technology and operational costs. Promote the localization and adaptation of warehouse management systems, optimize multilingual operation functions and national tax data interfaces, and enhance the adaptability and stability of overseas warehouse operations. Establish a special scientific research fund to support technology enterprises and overseas warehouse operators to jointly develop artificial intelligence inventory management systems, energy-saving storage facilities, recyclable packaging technologies, etc. based on the characteristics of the overseas warehouse location, such as the humid and hot climate in Southeast Asia and the low-carbon standards in Europe, to accelerate the transformation of overseas warehouses towards high efficiency, intelligence, low-carbon and environmental protection.