Expo highlights enormous e-commerce opportunities

Jack Ma delivers opening speech at 13th China-Asian Expo, focusing on e-commerce, digital age, Yang Ziman and Zhang Li report.

An open and fair market between China and ASEAN will facilitate e-commerce development in the region, said Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group, at the opening ceremony of the 13th China-ASEAN Expo on Sunday.

"Developing countries, though lagging behind developed countries in the age of information technology, expect huge development opportunities in the digital age. The China-ASEAN market, as it becomes more open, free and fair, will see great growth that will benefit small and medium-sized companies, ordinary people and young people," said Ma.

The Chinese government has approved cross-border e-commerce trial programs in Nanning, the capital of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

In September 2015, commercial institutes from seven ASEAN countries, including Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar and Vietnam, have signed a memorandum of crossborder e-commerce with the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.

The China-ASEAN Information Harbor, headquartered in Nanning, was set up in 2014 with the purpose of boosting China's and ASEAN countries' cooperation via internet connectivity and information sharing.

A China-ASEAN e-commerce summit is being held during CAEXPO, for which more than 600 businessmen coming from China, Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar have convened.

"E-commerce has become a new driving force for trade growth," said Wu Tongdiao, chief of the Foreign Trade Affair Office of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. At this year's CAEXPO, the Ministry of Commerce has designated China Electronic Commerce Association to showcase leading Chinese e-commerce companies, such as logistics service provider OneTouch from Alibaba, Jingdong Mall and Osell at the expo.

Google has also set its eye on the e-commerce potential in Guangxi. It has set up a Google AdWords experience center in Nanning, which is to be officially opened on Sep 12.

"The center encompasses the exhibition of high-tech products from the Silicon Valley, cross-border e-commerce talent training, incubation of cross-border e-commerce micro-enterprises, and Google's big data mining and application," said Chen Xiaodong, chief of the Google AdWords center in Nanning.

Chen said that Guangxi is "an important gate of the Belt and Road Initiative". The region's enterprises have a strong need to go global. Google AdWords is able to offer comprehensive solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises to more effectively target overseas markets and expand their export through e-commerce.

China's cross-border e-commerce trade amounted to 5.4 trillion yuan ($818 billion) last year, rising 28.6 percent from a year earlier, according to a report released by China E-commerce Research Center. ASEAN was the third-largest importer of China's cross-border e-commerce products, taking up 11.4 percent, behind the US and European Union.

According to a white paper on the cooperation in telecommunications between China and ASEAN released on Sunday, China's rising cross-border e-commerce will bring about 400 million potential users in ASEAN.

The fast developing e-commerce in ASEAN is expected to become the most important market for China's e-commerce.

Zhou Mo contributed to this story

Contact the writers at yangziman@chinadaily.com.cn and zhangli@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 09/12/2016 page12)