(i) The scale of cross-border e-commerce transactions continues to expand, and its proportion in import and export trade continues to increase
The trend of globalization and the rapid development of China’s e-commerce industry have brought opportunities to cross-border e-commerce. In recent years, supported by policies and the gradual improvement of the industry development environment, China’s export cross-border e-commerce has made great progress, mainly reflected in the fact that cross-border e-commerce plays an important role in the transformation and upgrading of traditional foreign trade, and its scale accounts for a gradually increasing proportion of the total import and export value. According to relevant data, the scale of China’s cross-border e-commerce transactions has increased from about RMB 3.9 trillion in 2014 to about RMB 7.6 trillion in 2017, and the proportion of the total import and export value of that year has increased from 12.9% to 27.3%. It is estimated that the scale of China’s cross-border e-commerce transactions will reach RMB 9 trillion in 2018
(ii) Export cross-border e-commerce occupies a dominant position in the import and export structure, but the proportion of import cross-border e-commerce has increased year by year
Under the condition that the overall export volume is relatively stable, export cross-border e-commerce has gradually replaced general trade, and has good growth. From the perspective of the import and export structure of cross-border e-commerce, China’s cross-border e-commerce exports account for more than 80%. As shown in Figure 1-3, the scale of China’s cross-border e-commerce exports in 2014 was 3.57 trillion yuan, accounting for 91.5% of the total transaction volume; in 2017, the scale of cross-border e-commerce exports was 6.3 trillion yuan, accounting for 82.9% of the total transaction volume. The rapid growth of cross-border e-commerce exports is mainly due to the use of e-commerce to replace traditional general trade methods, and to replace traditional offline retail with e-commerce, making products more cost-effective, improving convenience, and increasing new consumer demand. At the same time, the scale of import cross-border e-commerce is also expanding, and its proportion of the total transaction volume has increased from 8.5% in 2014 to 17.1% in 2017. The main reason is that the increase in residents’ income level and the change in consumption concepts have brought a new round of consumption upgrades to China, and users have higher requirements for cross-border e-commerce. (III) In terms of business model, export cross-border e-commerce is mainly B2B business, and the B2C cross-border model is gradually emerging. Cross-border e-commerce can be divided into cross-border B2B and cross-border retail (B2C, C2C) according to the operation model. Among them, foreign trade B2B occupies a dominant position in cross-border e-commerce. This is because the single transaction amount of foreign trade B2B is large, most orders require multiple negotiations to reach an agreement, and there are more long-term stable orders.
Retail cross-border e-commerce directly faces end customers. Currently, it accounts for a relatively low proportion in cross-border e-commerce, but its development is gradually accelerating and its proportion is gradually increasing.