Guangzhou aims for cross-border e-commerce hub

The southern Chinese city of Guangzhou is striving to build itself into a cross-border e-commerce hub with the city's municipal government recently unveiling a range of measures to the sector.

The measures cover comprehensive reforms, stimulating innovation, building public service platforms for cross-border e-commerce, boosting the development of several pilot parks and promoting the integration of services including customs, tax, inspection, logistics and financing.

The measures also involve the introduction of leading enterprises from home and abroad, especially service-oriented companies in the areas of cross-border e-commerce transaction, logistics supply chain as well as payment and exchange settlement.

Guangzhou will also foster a batch of local enterprises in the cross-border e-commerce sector which will receive preferential policies in customs, tax and quarantine and inspection.

The city also vows to build several distinctive industrial parks and explore ways to build an import hub for fresh food and cold chain products. Moreover, Guangzhou will select a batch of municipal-level e-commerce industrial parks, offer them financial subsidies and give them priority when reporting to build national-level, provincial-level or municipal-level e-commerce demonstration bases.

In addition, Guangzhou will support e-commerce development by means of equity investment, guiding private capital to set up special e-commerce development fund and develop online financing and online insurance services for the cross-border e-commerce industry.

The city's government will also work hard to offer special financial support for cross-border e-commerce businesses and cut down the operation costs for companies by means of offering rent subsidies and purchasing their services.

In 2016, the import and export value of Guangzhou's cross-border e-commerce industry hit 14.7 billion yuan ($2.2 billion), with import and export value reaching 8.7 billion and 6 billion yuan respectively, an increase of 150 percent and 83 percent.