Toward high-quality development through cross-border e-commerce

The Ministry of Commerce and eight other departments jointly issued a policy guideline on Tuesday, rolling out a series of policy measures to cultivate cross-border e-commerce businesses, strengthen the construction of relevant infrastructure and logistics systems, and promote the high-quality growth of overseas warehouses. These are part of China's efforts to inject new momentum into foreign trade.

The guideline says China will encourage financial institutions to provide financial support for cross-border e-commerce enterprises with a real trade background, and optimize export credit insurance underwriting models to provide insurance guarantees. It will also encourage qualified cross-border e-commerce companies to build sale networks and brand operation centers in overseas markets.

China will simplify foreign exchange revenue and expenditure procedures for small and micro cross-border e-commerce enterprises and support qualified banks and nonbank payment institutions to provide cross-border e-commerce enterprises efficient cross-border fund settlement services.

Given that the State Council passed a document at an executive meeting on May 24, pointing out that the development of cross-border e-commerce, overseas warehouses and other new forms of foreign trade is conducive to optimizing China's foreign trade structure, the guideline marks a concrete step to promote the development of China's cross-border e-commerce business.

Cross-border e-commerce is a new form and model of foreign trade that adapts to new trends. Together with overseas warehouses and other new foreign trade infrastructure, it can reduce intermediate links and create new advantages in international economic cooperation.

The scale of China's cross-border e-commerce trade has increased by more than 10 times in the past five years. In the first quarter of this year, the import and export value of China's cross-border e-commerce was 577.6 billion yuan ($79.63 billion), up 9.6 percent year-on-year. China now has more than 120,000 cross-border e-commerce entities, more than 1,000 cross-border e-commerce industry parks, and more than 2,500 overseas warehouses covering more than 30 million square meters, of which more than 1,800 focus on serving cross-border e-commerce trade.

With the implementation of these measures, China's cross-border e-commerce business is expected to usher in a new spring for further and high-quality development.