E-commerce fuels Shandong's foreign trade growth

Cross-border e-commerce is becoming a new driving force for Shandong's foreign trade development and a new engine for regional industrial transformation and upgrading.

According to the statistics from the Shandong Provincial Department of Commerce, from January to November of 2018, imports and exports of cross-border e-commerce in the province increased overall by 41.6 percent, exports by 34.5 percent and imports by 53.8 percent.

In recent years, Shandong has attached great importance to the development of the cross-border e-commerce sector. It has issued a slew of measures and policies to cultivate and stimulate the sector's advancement such as building provincial-level comprehensive pilot zones for cross-border e-commerce and launching training courses for local enterprises, striving to create a complete industrial chain and an optimal ecosystem for cross-border e-commerce.

At present, there are 136 provincial-level cross-border entities. Qingdao and Weihai have been approved to build national pilot zones for cross-border e-commerce. More than 15,000 traditional foreign trade enterprises and manufacturing companies in Shandong have achieved new development through cross-border e-commerce.

As a new business form, cross-border e-commerce has several advantages including lower entry threshold, fewer intermediaries, lower cost and shorter transaction cycles, which can help domestic businesses reduce the cost in international trade and facilitate the international business of domestic small and medium-sized enterprises. It has a large market and good development prospects.

To share insights into cross-border e-commerce development and go with the flow, the fourth Shandong Cross-Border E-commerce Ecosystem Summit was held on Dec 28 in Jinan, capital of Shandong province.

More than 2,000 guests including government officials, experts, scholars and representatives from cross-border e-commerce platforms and foreign trade enterprises from around the world participated.

At the event, Lyu Wei, vice director of Shandong, said that Shandong's export market covers 228 countries and regions and cross-border e-commerce has become a driving force in its foreign trade development.

Lyu added that developing cross-border e-commerce can help local enterprises adapt to the needs of international clients and the competitive environment, enhance their capability to innovate products, and make "Made-in-China" and "China Service" more impactful in the international market.