How to build an institutional open ecosystem for cross-border e-commerce?
How to build an institutional open ecosystem for cross-border e-commerce?
In the current era when the digital economy is reshaping the global trade landscape, cross-border e-commerce has upgraded from a supplementary force for foreign trade growth to a core component of the national strategic system. As an important link connecting the domestic and international dual circulation, cross-border e-commerce not only promotes the continuous expansion of trade scale but also plays a key role in reconstructing the global value chain and leading institutional opening up. At present, China's cross-border e-commerce is standing at a new starting point of transitioning from scale advantages to quality advantages. Building an institutional opening-up ecosystem suitable for the digital age has become an inevitable choice to break through development bottlenecks and achieve high-quality development.
China's cross-border e-commerce has achieved a significant scale advantage.
After years of development, China's cross-border e-commerce has established the world's most complete industrial ecosystem, forming a significant scale advantage and a first-mover effect. The business entities have shown a multi-level upward trend - the number has grown exponentially, and the scale and level of leading enterprises have continued to rise. By 2024, the number of cross-border e-commerce entities in China will exceed 120,000. The overseas warehouse network covers the major trade nodes around the world, with a high-density layout in mature markets in Europe and America.
By the beginning of 2025, there will be over 1,500 overseas warehouse enterprises serving China's cross-border e-commerce business, with more than 5,000 overseas warehouses. Policy innovation has continuously released institutional dividends. The customs clearance process has been simplified to achieve minute-level declaration efficiency. The "cross-customs area return" model has been promoted nationwide, significantly reducing the return and exchange cycle and effectively lowering the overall compliance cost.
While developing rapidly, cross-border e-commerce is also confronted with increasingly prominent structural contradictions. The primary challenge is the insufficient ability to cope with international rules. The continuous upgrading of new trade barriers constitutes a systemic pressure. The US's cancellation of tax exemption for small packages has significantly increased operational costs, and the new VAT regulations in the EU have raised compliance pressure.
There are obvious shortcomings in enterprises' response capabilities. Only a few enterprises have established a complete carbon tariff response system, and most enterprises have a vague understanding of the carbon footprint calculation standards for their products. Leading enterprises have been heavily fined overseas due to non-compliance with cross-border data transmission, highlighting the obvious insufficiency of Chinese enterprises in adapting to international rules such as GDPR.
The cross-border logistics network shows a significant structural imbalance. The distribution of shipping routes is uneven, and the direct shipping capacity supply to emerging markets lags behind, resulting in prolonged logistics time and persistently high transportation costs on some key land routes. The layout of overseas warehouses is uneven, with excessive concentration in Europe and the US, while coverage in emerging regions along the Belt and Road Initiative is seriously insufficient. There are "three obstacles" in policy coordination. Vertically, the connection between provincial policies and local details is not smooth, increasing the cross-regional operation costs for enterprises. Horizontally, the information systems of customs, taxation, and foreign exchange departments have not been integrated, and the "data silos" have led to enterprises submitting documents repeatedly, increasing the customs clearance time by two to three times.
Facing the triple challenges of system, ecology and capacity
At the institutional level, institutional opening-up lags behind business model innovation. The domestic policy system is fragmented, and there are significant differences in regulatory standards among various comprehensive pilot zones, resulting in a notable disparity in tax burdens for cross-regional operating enterprises. Compatibility issues in cross-border trade rules are prominent. The differences in commodity classification standards between China and some trading partners have increased the compliance difficulty for enterprises. The pace of policy iteration lags behind business model innovation. The regulation of new business forms such as live-streaming e-commerce is lagging, and there is a lack of legislation in cutting-edge areas such as digital product tariffs.
The regulatory framework for emerging business forms such as live-streaming e-commerce and social e-commerce is still not well established, and the introduction of relevant rules is significantly delayed. In cutting-edge areas such as digital product tariffs and cross-border data transmission, there are obvious legislative gaps. At the same time, international rule-making competition is deepening. The United States and Europe are actively building new barriers such as carbon footprint disclosure and data flow restrictions. In this process, Chinese enterprises have insufficient say in international rule-making, with low proposal adoption rates and low representation.
At the ecological level, the land-sea coordinated ecological foundation is yet to be solidified, and there are systemic weaknesses in the resilience of the logistics network. The regional distribution of intelligent overseas warehouses is severely imbalanced, with a notable lack of coverage in emerging markets, especially in Southeast Asia. The frequency of operation of the China-Europe Railway Express dedicated to cross-border e-commerce is far lower than the actual demand of enterprises. The efficiency of multimodal transport connection is low, and the dwell time of goods at key hub nodes has increased.
The lack of unified infrastructure standards makes it difficult for automated equipment to be compatible; the difference in railway gauges leads to low efficiency in border transshipment, significantly prolonging cross-border transportation time. There is a structural mismatch in the financial service system, with a severe shortage of financing supply for light-asset small and medium-sized enterprises. Enterprises with insufficient collateral under the traditional credit model have difficulty obtaining loans. Cross-border payment tools have insufficient local coverage in some emerging markets, forcing consumers to rely heavily on high-cost methods such as cash on delivery. Risk management tools are conspicuously lacking. In small-language markets, there is a scarcity of foreign exchange risk hedging products, making enterprises vulnerable to sharp fluctuations in exchange rates. The penetration rate of credit insurance in emerging markets is low, posing high credit risks for enterprises when expanding.
In terms of capabilities, enterprises' globalization capabilities are facing generational challenges. Leading enterprises are encountering systemic risks due to the relocation of production capacity or the failure of their localization strategies, the increase in overall costs due to insufficient localization of supply chains, or the loss of major orders due to failure to meet specific certification requirements in target markets. Small and micro enterprises, lacking effective early warning and response mechanisms, are often severely affected by sudden policy changes in target countries, resulting in severe cargo accumulation or forced withdrawal from the market. The underlying contradiction lies in the generational gap in capability building. The development model that relied on policy dividends (such as tax incentives and customs clearance facilitation) in the past is no longer sustainable, while the compliance capabilities necessary to adapt to new regulatory systems (such as complex rules of origin and carbon accounting standards) have not been widely established, and the proportion of enterprises with professional compliance teams is low.
Build an institutionalized open ecological system
At present, cross-border e-commerce urgently needs to build a new type of institutional open ecosystem that is compatible with the rules of digital trade. Through the dual-wheel drive of institutional innovation and ecological synergy, it is necessary to accelerate the dynamic adaptation of policy supply and business model innovation, and strengthen China's rule-making dominance in the global value chain reconstruction. In this process, the strategic mission of cross-border e-commerce has transformed from the initial scale expansion engine to a dual carrier that not only serves as an economic cornerstone for consolidating the basic position of foreign trade but also functions as a strategic fulcrum for reshaping the digital governance order. This profound change reveals that traditional policy tools are no longer capable of resolving deep-seated structural contradictions.
Only by shifting towards a systematic ecological system construction centered on rule alignment, supported by land-sea linkage, and based on capacity empowerment, can a qualitative leap from trade scale advantages to international rule dominance be achieved.
We will focus on institutional opening-up, and build an intelligent tariff coordination platform and a risk prevention and control mechanism. We will innovate the tariff governance system, develop and apply a commodity classification assistance system based on machine learning technology to effectively address the risks of commodity classification caused by differences in tariff versions among countries. We will explore the coordinated innovation of "zero-tariff policies" and "cross-border data flow", exempting digital content products from tariffs; establish a classified management system for cross-border data flow, and allow pilot enterprises to safely transfer specific types of data to RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) partner countries. We will strengthen our say in international rules and promote the inclusion of China's commodity classification standards in the RCEP mutual recognition mechanism.
We will systematically build a risk prevention and control mechanism, set up industry-specific risk compensation funds to provide moderate compensation for losses caused by changes in carbon tariffs and overseas intellectual property litigation; jointly build a comprehensive overseas compliance service platform with international professional legal institutions to provide professional support for enterprises in dealing with complex international rules such as EU carbon tariff declaration and US intellectual property investigations; establish a trade friction early warning system covering key markets along the Belt and Road Initiative, and promptly push risk warning information to enterprises through dynamic monitoring of policy and regulatory changes in target countries.
Reconstruct the land-sea coordinated ecosystem, and build multi-functional hub warehouses and railway intermodal networks. Upgrade the intelligent overseas warehouse system, and layout intelligent distribution centers within a 200-kilometer radius along railway lines to form a 72-hour coverage circle. Focus on building integrated hub warehouses that integrate intelligent sorting, return and repair, and local modification services to enhance end-to-end fulfillment efficiency. Innovatively construct a "railway + overseas warehouse" intermodal network, and effectively reduce the comprehensive cost and time of cross-border logistics through the "mainline railway + terminal road" transportation organization model. Deepen the innovation of regional coordination mechanisms, and comprehensively promote the "coastal hub port + inland consolidation base" linkage model to achieve seamless integration between the port system and the market order management platform, optimize customs declaration and transportation processes, and reduce the cost of land-sea intermodal transportation. Give full play to the advantages of the Western Land-Sea New Corridor (China-ASEAN Corridor), and build a "railway hub + port cluster + digital trade platform" intermodal cooperation system to significantly improve the efficiency of cross-border transportation to the Southeast Asian market.
Gradually cultivate enterprise compliance, and establish a hierarchical empowerment and fault-tolerance mechanism. Implement differentiated empowerment for different entities. Leading enterprises can open core regulatory data interfaces to support the construction of a global supply chain risk early warning system; platform enterprises need to establish a digital marketing compliance system and introduce third-party audits to regularly assess risks; small and medium-sized enterprises can enjoy the "first order support plan", providing logistics cost support and establishing a fault-tolerance mechanism for compliance transformation to lower the threshold for rule application; micro and small sellers can use lightweight compliance tools to achieve one-click completion of declarations.
Integrate technical rules and develop an intelligent customs clearance platform and cross-border data flow mechanism. Develop an intelligent customs clearance platform integrating core modules such as natural language processing, multi-language semantic recognition, and dynamic rule engines, to achieve full-process functions including automatic parsing of customs declaration materials, intelligent matching of tariff classification, and real-time compliance risk warnings, significantly reducing the complexity of enterprise declarations and manual operation costs. Explore compatible paths for cross-border data flow rules, pilot a new secure transmission model based on deep data desensitization technology, and build a full-chain traceability mechanism through blockchain distributed evidence storage to ensure dual goals of sensitive information protection and data sovereignty compliance, providing underlying support for high-value scenarios such as cross-border digital marketing and supply chain collaboration, and systematically enhancing the conversion efficiency of enterprises' international business.
Expand into emerging markets and build smart logistics corridors and regional fulfillment centers. Focus on developing the China-Laos-Thailand smart logistics corridor, creating a multimodal transport hub integrating railway freight yards, road ports and air cold chain centers to achieve efficient "one-document" cross-border transportation. Fully leverage the tariff advantages of regional trade agreements such as RCEP, address obstacles in implementing the rules, and promote the large-scale export of advantageous product categories. Set up regional fulfillment centers in regions like Latin America, integrating bonded warehousing, local distribution and after-sales service functions to serve surrounding markets. Actively develop localized payment solutions to enhance transaction convenience and conversion rates.
From Policy Depressions to Regulatory High Ground
With the deepening implementation of RCEP and the accelerated evolution of digital trade rules, the development of cross-border e-commerce requires the establishment of a three-dimensional support system at the national level, including policy chain, industrial chain, and innovation chain. In the policy chain dimension, a cross-departmental coordination mechanism should be established to enhance collaboration among departments such as commerce, customs, and finance; and laws and regulations should be revised to add specific provisions for new business forms. In the industrial chain dimension, guidelines for the cross-border expansion of key industrial belts should be compiled, and an empowerment consortium of "industrial clusters + platform enterprises + service providers" should be established; a national-level cross-border e-commerce research and development center should be built to tackle key technologies such as intelligent customs declaration and cross-border payment. In the innovation chain dimension, a digital trade development fund should be set up to support innovative projects such as intelligent logistics networks and cross-border data flows; and "regulatory sandboxes" should be piloted in free trade zones to allow the testing of cutting-edge business forms such as cross-border transactions of digital products.
Through the three-way linkage of rule alignment, standard output, and model innovation, China's cross-border e-commerce will accelerate its transformation from a global trade participant to a rule co-shaper, injecting new impetus into the construction of an open and inclusive digital economy governance system.
