In recent years, China’s cross-border e-commerce import and export scale has continued to grow rapidly, becoming a new bright spot in foreign trade development. The Ministry of Commerce and other six departments recently jointly issued the Notice on Expanding the Pilot of Cross-border E-commerce Retail Import and Strictly Implementing the Regulatory Requirements (hereinafter referred to as the Notice). The Notice clarifies that the pilot of cross-border e-commerce retail import will be extended to all cities (and regions) where the Pilot Free Trade Zone, the Cross-border E-commerce Comprehensive Test Zone, the Comprehensive Bonded Zone, the Import Trade Promotion Innovation Demonstration Zone and the Bonded Logistics Center (Type B) are located. What impact will the expansion of the pilot scope bring, and what is the current development trend of cross-border e-commerce? The reporter conducted an interview.
China’s cross-border e-commerce retail import scale has exceeded 100 billion yuan.
Cross-border e-commerce retail imports are not far away from us. Domestic consumers purchase overseas goods through cross-border e-commerce platforms, which constitutes cross-border e-commerce retail imports. According to statistics, in 2020, China’s cross-border e-commerce retail import scale has exceeded 100 billion yuan.
The development of new formats can not be separated from the strong support of relevant policies. Since 2016, China has explored the transitional policy arrangement of "temporarily supervising personal belongings" for cross-border e-commerce retail imports. Since then, the transitional period has been extended twice to the end of 2017 and the end of 2018. In November, 2018, the Ministry of Commerce and other six departments issued the Notice on Improving the Supervision of Retail Imports in cross-border electronic commerce, which made it clear that the cross-border e-commerce retail imports were supervised according to the imported articles for personal use in 37 cities, and the requirements of approval, registration or filing of the first import license were not implemented, thus ensuring the continuity and stability of the supervision arrangement after the transition period. In 2020, the pilot will be further expanded to 86 cities and the whole island of Hainan.
"Supervision of imported articles for personal use" means simpler procedures and faster circulation. Driven by the pilot, China’s cross-border e-commerce retail imports have grown rapidly. Gao Feng, spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce, said that since the pilot of cross-border e-commerce retail import was launched in November 2018, various departments and localities have actively explored and constantly improved the policy system, standardized in development and developed in standardization. At the same time, the risk prevention and control and supervision system is gradually improving, and the supervision after the event is powerful and effective, which has the conditions for replication and promotion in a wider range.
"The expansion of the pilot scope this time is mainly to better meet the people’s growing needs for a better life and promote the better development of cross-border e-commerce imports." Gao Feng introduced that in the future, the cities where the relevant regions are located can carry out online shopping bonded import business as long as they meet the requirements of customs supervision, which will facilitate enterprises to flexibly adjust their business layout according to development needs, facilitate consumers to purchase cross-border goods more conveniently, and help give play to the decisive role of the market in resource allocation, and at the same time focus on strengthening post-event supervision.
With the accelerating pace of consumption upgrading, the demand of Chinese consumers for high-quality imported goods is increasing day by day. More consumer groups hope to buy all over the world without leaving home, and the space for cross-border e-commerce retail import development is broader. In the next step, the Ministry of Commerce will work with relevant departments to urge all pilot cities to strictly implement the requirements and promote the healthy and sustainable development of cross-border e-commerce retail imports.
Support the intensive introduction of policies to create a good environment for rapid development.
In March this year, the first China Cross-border E-commerce Fair was held in Fuzhou, attracting 2,363 enterprises to participate in the fair, covering 33 cross-border e-commerce platforms around the world. According to incomplete statistics, the total amount of intentional transactions reached in this exhibition exceeded $3.5 billion. According to customs data, in 2020, the import and export of cross-border e-commerce in China was 1.69 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 31.1%. Cross-border e-commerce has gradually become a new engine for the high-quality development of foreign trade.
Zhang Jianping, director of the Regional Economic Cooperation Research Center of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, said that in recent years, cross-border e-commerce has maintained a double-digit growth rate and made remarkable contributions to China’s foreign trade development. Especially in 2020, China’s foreign trade will achieve a V-shaped reversal under severe challenges, which is not unrelated to the development of cross-border e-commerce. Cross-border e-commerce has played its unique advantages of breaking through time and space constraints, low cost and high efficiency, and has become an important choice for enterprises to carry out international trade and the vanguard of foreign trade innovation and development, and has played a positive role for foreign trade enterprises to cope with the impact of the epidemic.
The intensive introduction of support policies has also created a good environment for the rapid development of cross-border e-commerce.
In 2020, China will add 46 cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test zones, and the number of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test zones will be expanded to 105. The Ministry of Commerce, together with relevant departments, adheres to the principle of encouraging innovation, inclusiveness and prudence, encourages the cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test area to carry out service, format and model innovation, supports the integrated development of cross-border e-commerce such as design, production, marketing, trading and after-sales, and accelerates the construction of a new highland for opening up. All localities take the cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test zone as the starting point, build offline industrial parks, actively attract leading enterprises to enter the zone, and drive the surrounding areas to gather upstream and downstream supporting enterprises. At present, more than 330 industrial parks have been built in various cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test areas, driving employment to over 3 million people.
In terms of customs clearance, the General Administration of Customs has innovatively launched the B2B (business-to-business) export pilot of cross-border e-commerce, and newly added the direct export of cross-border e-commerce (9710) and the export of cross-border e-commerce to overseas warehouses (9810). Now, the pilot projects have been carried out in 22 directly affiliated customs offices such as Beijing, and the innovative results of cross-border e-commerce supervision have been extended from B2C (business-to-person) to B2B field, with supporting measures to facilitate customs clearance. The pilot enterprises can apply the "one
"Under the background of the customs’ pilot export supervision and the acceleration of the construction of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones in various places, cross-border e-commerce will continue to flourish with the encouragement of policies and environment, injecting new vitality into China’s foreign trade transformation and upgrading." Zhang Jianping said.
Digital technology is widely used in all aspects, and the supervision method needs to keep pace with the times.
The wide application of digital technologies such as cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and blockchain in all aspects of cross-border trade has driven the continuous transformation and upgrading of cross-border e-commerce.
Wang Xiaohong, deputy director of the Information Department of China International Economic Exchange Center, said that this new digital foreign trade format is based on the full-link cross-border trade platform, forming an ecosystem integrating manufacturers, suppliers, retailers, consumers, logistics, finance and government regulatory authorities. It includes not only cross-border commodity circulation, but also related supporting services such as logistics, finance, information, payment, settlement, credit investigation, finance and taxation, efficient comprehensive foreign trade services such as customs clearance, foreign exchange collection and tax refund, as well as information-based, data-based and intelligent new supervision methods and new international rules system.
"It is precisely because of the super-large-scale market advantage, industrial promotion mechanism and inclusive supervision method that China’s cross-border e-commerce enterprises have grown rapidly, and their scale and strength have jumped rapidly." Wang Xiaohong said, however, it should also be noted that cross-border e-commerce is still in the initial stage of development, and supporting facilities such as warehousing, transportation, distribution, after-sales service, experience, payment and settlement still need to be improved, and the supervision method needs to keep pace with the times, and both standardization and development should be adhered to.
While the pilot of cross-border e-commerce retail import is expanding, it is also explicitly required that all pilot cities (regions) should earnestly assume the main responsibility of the pilot work of cross-border e-commerce retail import policy in the region, strictly implement the regulatory requirements, comprehensively strengthen the prevention and control of quality and safety risks, and promptly investigate and deal with violations such as "online shopping bonded+offline self-raising" and secondary sales outside the special customs supervision area to ensure the smooth progress of the pilot work and jointly promote the healthy and sustainable development of the industry.
There is demand in the market, policies add vitality, cross-border e-commerce is growing strongly, and supporting facilities are gradually following up. According to reports, at present, there are more than 1,800 overseas warehouses for cross-border e-commerce in China, with a growth rate of 80% in 2020 and an area of over 12 million square meters.
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