Flexible cross-border sales models expand financial frontiers

"As a new form of foreign trade, cross-border e-commerce has become an important driving force for bolstering the steady growth of foreign trade, as well as promoting the transformation and upgrading of the traditional manufacturing sector," said Zhang Zhouping, a senior analyst tracking business-to-business and cross-border activities at the Internet Economy Institute, a domestic consultancy.

Zhang said an increasing number of Chinese manufacturers are stepping up efforts to leverage cross-border e-commerce channels that feature innovative and flexible on-demand production models to expand their footprint abroad and build new brands.

By constantly monitoring market changes and collecting consumers' real-time feedback, these emerging platforms can make accurate predictions, while the flexible supply chain model is conducive to upgrading an entire industrial chain, ranging from design and development to production, warehousing and logistics, Zhang said.

The popularity of Chinese products in overseas markets demonstrates that these cost-effective goods have gained wide recognition and burnished the image of domestic brands abroad, he added.

Meanwhile, short-video app TikTok, owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, has launched its e-commerce service, TikTok Shop, in the US. The service enables users to find and directly buy products featured in livestreaming broadcasts and short videos.

TikTok, which began rolling out e-commerce services in 2021 in Indonesia, has entered more than 10 countries, including the United Kingdom, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. The e-commerce shop offers a wide range of products from clothes to electronics, and aims to tap into the potential purchasing power of TikTok's more than 150 million monthly active users in the US.

AliExpress, Alibaba Group's cross-border e-commerce platform, is accelerating its global push. It announced plans to offer subsidies worth 10 billion yuan to encourage more Chinese brands and merchants to sell overseas, and has expanded its global five-day delivery service to include several prominent markets in Europe through collaboration with Cainiao, Alibaba's logistics arm.

Cross-border e-commerce has become a driving force for innovation in global trade, said Cindy Tai, vice-president of Amazon and head of Amazon Global Selling Asia. She said China's cross-border e-commerce export industry is gaining momentum with huge development potential.

The company will help Chinese merchants improve the efficiency of supply chains and operations, leverage advanced generative artificial intelligence technology to enhance the sellers' experience, upgrade cross-border logistics and delivery services, as well as scale up localization inputs this year.