Give full play to the engine role of cross-border e-commerce in trade innovation and development

Innovative development in trade is an inherent requirement for comprehensively promoting high-quality development, an important support for accelerating the construction of a new development pattern, and an active response to changes in the international economic and trade situation. The "15th Five Year Plan" proposes to "promote innovative development of trade" and requires "enhancing the functions of trade promotion platforms and supporting the development of new formats and models such as cross-border e-commerce". The Central Economic Work Conference has made important arrangements to encourage and support service exports, actively develop digital trade, and green trade. Cross border e-commerce is a driving force for China's foreign trade development and an important trend in international trade development. Better leveraging the unique role of cross-border e-commerce in empowering small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises, promoting international industrial development, and maintaining supply chain security, and further promoting innovative trade development, is an important aspect of doing a good job in foreign trade work next year.

During the 14th Five Year Plan period, the potential of China's cross-border e-commerce in "selling globally" has been further unleashed, and its advantages in "buying globally" have also continued to be utilized.

Cross border e-commerce has become an important engine driving trade growth. In 2024, China's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports will reach approximately 2.7 trillion yuan, an increase of 67% compared to 2020. In the first three quarters of 2025, China's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports amounted to approximately 2.06 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.4%. According to preliminary statistics, by the first half of 2024, there will be over 120000 cross-border e-commerce entities in China, with over 2500 overseas warehouses and an area of over 30 million square meters. Cross border e-commerce is also an important carrier for smooth domestic and international dual circulation. China's cross-border e-commerce platforms have shifted from B2C (business to consumer) to B2B (business to business) models, with B2B models accounting for over two-thirds of the total. This not only covers daily consumer goods trade, but also involves the import and export of mechanical and electrical products, energy and mineral resources, agricultural products, and other commodities. Platform enterprises rely on technologies such as data, computing power, algorithms, and artificial intelligence to build a digitalized supply chain system, which can enhance the linkage effect of both domestic and international markets and resources, promote precise docking between international customer demand and domestic enterprise supply, and effectively improve the quality and efficiency of domestic and international circulation.

Meanwhile, e-commerce platforms have become organizers, managers, and leaders of the supply chain. At present, the leading e-commerce platforms in some industries have become a new generation of integrated and integrated e-commerce featuring "trade in goods+trade in services" and "industrial Internet plus+consumer Internet". Top e-commerce platforms can connect upstream and downstream manufacturers and various service providers, building a fully integrated industry and trade ecosystem, and driving ecological chain enterprises to jointly explore international markets. For example, a large e-commerce platform can organize supply chain management and services throughout the entire process from research and development design, raw material procurement, production and manufacturing, warehousing and logistics, display and trading, credit financing, customs declaration and tax refund, brand promotion, global sales, etc., enabling small and medium-sized enterprises on the ecological chain to effectively reduce trade costs, improve the speed, efficiency, and quality of product innovation.

During the 15th Five Year Plan period, the bottleneck constraints, shortcomings, and weaknesses in the development of cross-border e-commerce in China remain prominent, and the external environmental challenges faced are even more severe.

From the perspective of the development of cross-border e-commerce itself, firstly, there is still a significant gap in the comprehensive competitiveness of e-commerce platform enterprises compared to developed countries. According to data, in 2024, four Chinese companies will enter the top ten cross-border e-commerce platforms in the world, but the total amount of goods traded is only 27% of that of Amazon in the United States. Secondly, the business model is relatively extensive, and transformation and upgrading are particularly urgent. E-commerce platform enterprises are mainly small and medium-sized enterprises, and their import and export goods are mainly traditional consumer goods such as textiles, home furnishings, cosmetics, food, and digital products. The competition for homogeneous products, low prices, and "internal competition" is particularly fierce, and most enterprises lack the ability to expand their international channels. Thirdly, the problem of talent shortage is prominent. There is still a significant gap in digital technology talents such as big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, as well as professional talents in foreign languages, live streaming, international marketing, law, and other fields. Fourthly, due to the lack of fixed assets as collateral for small and medium-sized e-commerce enterprises, financing difficulties and high costs are more prominent. The fifth issue is that the overseas service guarantee system is not yet sound. The cross-border payment system and international logistics distribution service system mainly rely on overseas payment and logistics systems, which increases the payment costs and risk of goods loss for e-commerce enterprises. It is difficult and costly for enterprises to protect their rights overseas. Sixth, the utilization rate of platform data development is not high, and the value release of data elements is insufficient.

From the perspective of the international environment, the instability and uncertainty of the international market have increased, and the risks of e-commerce platform enterprises operating overseas have risen. On the one hand, there has been an increase in international economic and trade restrictions, and some countries and regions have introduced policies to restrict cross-border e-commerce. For example, the United States has officially terminated its policy of exempting small packages from China with a value not exceeding $800 from tariffs; The EU implements the General Product Safety Regulation, which imposes stricter safety requirements on consumer goods. On the other hand, the United States, Japan, and the European Union remain the main markets for cross-border e-commerce in China. Due to factors such as rising protectionism and geopolitical instability, trade frictions have intensified, and trade disputes involving product price dumping, counterfeiting, green trade, and data security compliance reviews may further increase.

In this regard, we must make good use of the advantages of China's super large market, complete industrial system, and abundant human resources, seize the opportunity to break through bottleneck constraints, fill in the gaps and weaknesses, promote the optimization, expansion, and strengthening of cross-border e-commerce in China, and effectively enhance the level of trade digitization.

One is to encourage e-commerce platforms to develop towards scale, integration, and full chain. Building an independent and controllable international supply chain with enterprises as the core is an important path to enhance China's trade and industrial competitiveness, and maintain the security of industrial and supply chains. In recent years, e-commerce platform enterprises have shown a trend of giant development, with an increase in mergers and acquisitions and market concentration. Mega scale e-commerce platform enterprises have become an important force for a country to participate in international competition in digital trade. It is necessary to promote e-commerce platform enterprises to expand their scale of operation through mergers and acquisitions, solve the problems of "small, scattered, and chaotic", encourage leading enterprises to improve their resource integration and data service capabilities, enhance their international supply chain management level, comprehensively empower the development of enterprises on the ecological chain, and create an international supply chain ecosystem that leads industrial and trade development, has international competitiveness, and is independent and controllable.

The second is to encourage cross-border e-commerce to empower industrial development. In recent years, e-commerce platforms have continuously deepened the "trade+industry chain" model, effectively driving the export of local industrial products and characteristic agricultural products, becoming a new carrier for the internationalization of local characteristic industries and a new channel for farmers to increase their income and become prosperous. We need to actively promote the deep integration of cross-border e-commerce and industries, rely on the foundation of industrial clusters to shape the advantages of e-commerce development, support platform enterprises to integrate and penetrate into various industrial fields, and continuously enrich application scenarios. Vigorously develop the "cross-border e-commerce+industrial belt", promote the integration and development of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones, cross-border e-commerce industrial parks, and other industrial clusters, and make e-commerce a backbone force to drive local characteristic products and industries to go global.

The third is to encourage e-commerce platforms to open up data resources to empower export enterprises. Massive data is the core resource and unique advantage of platform enterprises. Effectively developing and utilizing these data resources to enhance the competitiveness of export enterprises in new product development, international market expansion, and other aspects is an important path to promote high-quality trade development. We should further improve the incentive mechanism for open sharing of platform data, optimize the platform data open environment, encourage platform enterprises to integrate data resources, explore data value, create trustworthy data space, build a data storage, processing, processing, and application industry chain, form high-quality datasets, and provide data services for enterprises to conduct international market analysis, new product research and development design, etc.

The fourth is to improve the policy support and service system for cross-border e-commerce. Guide e-commerce enterprises to operate with integrity, establish a good reputation for Chinese products and brands, and improve consumer rights protection measures; Guide e-commerce enterprises to operate overseas in accordance with the law and regulations, and strengthen compliance training on the laws and regulations of the host country; Establishing a credit data system for customs, logistics, payment and other fields to provide convenience for e-commerce platform enterprises to raise funds; Improve the overseas service system, strengthen the construction of overseas warehouses, support logistics enterprises to "go global", and enhance the service capabilities of domestic cross-border payment platforms. At the same time, it is necessary to improve the overseas risk prevention and control system, perfect the overseas legal aid system, and create a favorable environment for the overseas development of e-commerce enterprises.