Cross-border e-commerce pick-me-ups

The General Administration of Customs estimates that in 2023 the total import and export volume of the nation's cross-border electronic commerce reached 2.38 trillion yuan ($327.7 billion), up 15.6 percent. Cross-border e-commerce is the new engine driving foreign trade growth.

Yet it should also be noted that there are many shortcomings in the domestic cross-border e-commerce sector. The digital infrastructure, which includes online service platforms, is still far from satisfying. Besides, there are still some difficulties and bottlenecks in customs clearance, while the cultivation of overseas brands and intellectual property protection are still insufficient.

These issues need to be addressed to accelerate innovation and sustain prosperity in foreign trade development.

First, product quality improvement and brand building need to be strengthened. Proper policies can be introduced to encourage cross-border e-commerce enterprises to focus on technology, quality, service, culture and other brand connotations, so as to build a new image of Chinese brands in the global market featuring high product quality and trustable after-sale services.

Second, the building of digital infrastructure can accelerate. Technologies such as blockchain, big data and artificial intelligence can be more widely applied to promote the construction of global e-commerce infrastructure to support warehousing, logistics, payment and data, and form a digital trade closed loop covering the entire process of goods import and export.

With mature digital infrastructure and cultivated brands, other measures can also be taken, such as simplifying the foreign exchange procedures for small and micro cross-border e-commerce enterprises to minimize their economic and manual costs, improving financial service networks and encouraging all types of financial institutions to increase credit support to grant them easier access to their needed funds. Making use of the internet and social networks, e-commerce catches the trend of the times and it is imperative on the nation to rally more policy support so that Chinese consumers can buy globally and Chinese businesses can sell globally more conveniently.

-Economic Daily