“Cross-border e-commerce retail exports and small order exports have taken away many orders from traditional foreign trade companies, and traditional foreign trade has gradually declined.” Zheng Yuanzhen, a Fuzhou handicraft exporter who participated in the 115th Canton Fair, said.
With a compound growth rate of more than 30% for five consecutive years, cross-border e-commerce has become another Internet hot word in the e-commerce field this year after O2O. In Fujian, where the slowdown in import and export has become a reality, the “cross-border e-commerce” model is also promising.
Data show that Fujian’s foreign trade import and export in the first quarter of this year was 237.28 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 4.4%. The slowdown in Fujian’s import and export has worried government departments, and a series of policies to boost exports have been introduced. Among them, the most attention-grabbing one is the recent introduction by the Fujian Provincial Government of the “Nine Measures to Promote the Stable Growth of Foreign Trade.”
The first article of the “Measures” points out: support the development of cross-border e-commerce, encourage projects that simplify cross-border e-commerce customs clearance, logistics, payment, taxation and other processes, and support cross-border e-commerce enterprises in setting up warehousing bases overseas. Build your own or use a third-party cross-border e-commerce platform, etc.
Li Zhenxin, an exporter of shoes and hats in Fuzhou, said: “Since 2012, the country’s foreign trade has been dominated by large orders, reduced long-term orders, and increased short-term and small orders. Although the risk of payment recovery has been partially avoided, profits have been significantly reduced. It’s also reality.”
Another data also confirms what Li Zhenxin said: at the Canton Fair in recent years, short- and medium-term orders accounted for more than 80%. Li Zhenxin believes that through cross-border e-commerce, skipping intermediary traders and directly connecting with overseas consumers is obviously a better sales model and can achieve overseas retail.
It can be seen that Fujian, a major foreign trade province, has “betted” on cross-border e-commerce and promoted the mainstreaming of this new foreign trade model, and has seen many promotions and results. After the “Measures”, Fujian issued the “Fujian Province Cross-Border Trade E-Commerce Work Implementation Plan” to solve the current problems of customs clearance, inspection declaration, foreign exchange collection and settlement, tax refund, and statistics in cross-border e-commerce.
The “Plan” also proposes that Fujian will build a cross-strait cross-border e-commerce demonstration zone and take the lead in introducing a group of influential e-commerce companies in Taiwan to carry out cross-border online retail business.
Last year, Fujian has successively implemented support policies such as export credit insurance, transformation and upgrading of processing trade, and optimization of the structure of key commodities. This year, Fujian is promoting the “construction of overseas Fujian commodity marketing centers” and “supporting the development of cross-border e-commerce”.
As an important textile production base in my country and the most international textile market on the west coast of the Taiwan Strait, Shishi is also one step ahead in “cross-border e-commerce”. The second Haixi (Shishi) E-commerce Conference held not long ago was to discuss how to use e-commerce to promote Chinese manufacturing to the global market. The “Three Cities Integrated Resource Sharing Strategic Cooperation Agreement” signed at the meeting is to integrate resource advantages and form a “three cities in one” cooperation and win-win model to promote the textile and clothing industry and supporting facilities among the three parties. Integrated development of industrial resources and e-commerce.
According to statistics, China’s cross-border e-commerce transaction volume in 2013 was approximately 3.1 trillion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 31.1% from 2008 to 2013. Industry insiders predict that cross-border e-commerce will continue to grow in 2014. Maintain strong growth momentum.
