Cross-border e-commerce pilot zones promote foreign trade upgrading

THE STATE COUNCIL, China's Cabinet, has decided to build comprehensive cross-border e-commerce experimental zones in 22 cities, including Beijing, Hohhot, Shenyang, Nanning, Lanzhou and Yiwu, where the customs clearance procedures will be simplified for e-commerce enterprises. Beijing Youth Daily comments:

This is the latest move in China's new round of opening-up and the upgrading of its foreign trade, showing China's belief that e-commerce represents the development trend of international trade.

The State Council has already established 13 cross-border e-commerce experimental zones since 2015. Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province, and home to China's e-commerce giant Alibaba, was the first experimental zone for cross-border e-commerce, and its trade volume in cross-border e-commerce has risen from over 100 million yuan ($14.95 million) in 2014 to more than 60 billion yuan last year, and the scale of the industry has grown nearly 500 times. Cross-border e-commerce has become a new engine for Hangzhou's economic growth and industrial upgrading.