Cross-border e-commerce, as the name suggests, is a cross-border e-commerce activity. The subjects of the transaction belong to different customs borders. Although the concept of “cross-border e-commerce” was gradually formed when e-commerce giants from various countries expanded into the international market, cross-border commercial transactions such as “overseas shopping” and “purchasing on behalf of others” existed long before that. Activity.
After entering 2014, cross-border e-commerce has exerted its huge energy and shown explosive development. In February 2014, Tmall Global was officially launched. During the “Double Eleven” period, users participated in transactions from 217 countries and regions. While it demonstrated its impressive strength, the country also provided relevant policy support. The customs in 2014 In March 2019, the “Notice on Issues of the Bonded Import Model for Cross-Border E-Commerce Service Pilot Online Shopping” was issued, specifically regulating issues related to cross-border e-commerce. As a result, cross-border e-commerce has opened a new stage of development.
In 2001, my country officially joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the domestic export industry officially ushered in a golden age. During this period, domestic export enterprises accumulated foreign exchange for the country with an unstoppable development momentum. , as of the end of 2014, the country’s foreign exchange reserve balance had reached US$3.84 trillion.
Such a huge foreign exchange reserve can be said to have laid a strong financial foundation for opening the country to overseas shopping. At the same time, after joining the WTO, the domestic market has also accepted goods from all over the world, which has greatly enriched the consumer demand of the Chinese people. In 2014, my country’s total import and export volume reached 26.43 trillion yuan, of which the total annual export trade was 14.39 trillion yuan and the total import trade was 12.04 trillion yuan.
From a macro perspective, the sustained and rapid development of the domestic market economy and strong export capabilities have greatly increased national income. The improvement of the country’s comprehensive strength has also made the RMB stronger and its purchasing power has been continuously enhanced. . Under this situation, the consumption power of Chinese people has also continued to increase, and the demand for overseas products has become increasingly strong.
As we all know, all goods involved in import and export need to pay certain taxes and fees. Generally speaking, imported goods are subject to import duties, value-added tax, consumption tax, etc., which increases the number of imported goods to a certain extent. the cost of. After entering the domestic market, there will still be logistics and warehousing costs, plus the profits allocated to middlemen. When the goods reach the hands of consumers, the price is already much higher than the export price.
In addition, internationally renowned brands have different strategies when setting prices. Some merchants have price discrimination against Chinese consumer groups, which will result in higher prices for their branded products when exported to my country. situation.
With the economic boom after China’s accession to the WTO, domestic information technology has also entered a period of rapid development. With the continuous improvement of national education levels and the popularization of the Internet, the Chinese people’s horizons have become more open. After opening up the country, along with the influx of goods from all over the world came information from all over the world, and people began to gradually discover that there was an extremely wide price difference between the same goods at home and abroad, so they found another way and opened up “overseas shopping”. ”, “purchasing on behalf of others” and other initial cross-border transaction methods.
At the same time, reports of quality problems in domestic products have become common in recent years, causing people to have a serious sense of distrust in domestic products. In particular, the “Sanlu milk powder” incident in 2008 dragged down almost all domestic milk powder brands. In desperation, domestic consumers have become more focused on choosing overseas brands when purchasing goods, so people have begun to move to overseas markets and become the “overseas shopping” group.
For consumers, they may just buy some daily necessities such as milk powder or cosmetics;
For the country, the customs personal mail checkpoint needs to face a sudden increase in International express; for the industry, this is an opportunity, and many international Chinese forwarding companies have also emerged.