Guangzhou has made full use of its international location conditions and concentrated cross-border e-commerce pilot projects in three areas: Nansha Bonded Zone, Baiyun Airport Comprehensive Bonded Zone and Guangzhou Bonded Zone. Nansha Bonded Zone is a free trade zone and has attracted mainstream e-commerce companies such as JD.com, Suning, No.1 Store and Jumei to settle in. Vipshop has set up its cross-border e-commerce headquarters in Nansha. Baiyun Airport Comprehensive Bonded Zone is located in Huadu District and has the advantage of an international aviation hub. In February 2014, it opened up the bonded business of imported cross-border e-commerce online shopping, which was the first of the three areas to start. Guangzhou Bonded Zone is located in Huangpu District. Its characteristic is that it is close to the city and can conveniently open a cross-border e-commerce experience area to serve the citizens. In addition, whether it is Nansha or Baiyun Airport, there are QP (Quick Pass) vehicles from Hong Kong every day to transport cross-border e-commerce goods to clear customs.
In addition, there are two characteristics of Guangzhou’s cross-border e-commerce:
First, unlike other cities, Guangzhou does not have a unified public service platform for external cross-border e-commerce. Since the cross-border e-commerce pilot in 2012, most of the pilot cities have prepared to establish a unified cross-border e-commerce public service platform, such as Zhengzhou’s E-trade, Shanghai’s Cross-border Pass, Ningbo’s Cross-border Shopping, Hangzhou’s Cross-border One-Step, etc. Guangzhou has taken a different path, dispersing the work of government service docking among various logistics service providers. Therefore, to engage in cross-border e-commerce activities through the Guangzhou port, there is no need for enterprises to register and land, and they only need to find local service providers to dock. However, this has led most logistics service providers to build their own comprehensive service platforms, which is not conducive to unified and standardized management, and also brings inconvenience to e-commerce companies.
Of course, in terms of internal customs clearance systems, Guangzhou Customs may be the most mature. After all, Guangzhou Customs once undertook the construction of the postal and express delivery system of the General Administration of Customs. Therefore, on the eve of the tax reform, in March 2016, Guangzhou Customs became the only pilot customs of the General Administration of Customs version (“cross-border trade e-commerce import unified version customs clearance platform”).
Second, compared with other cities, Guangzhou’s import cross-border e-commerce O2O is flourishing everywhere. Cross-border e-commerce 020 began with the “bonded display and transaction” policy of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone. In August 2014, the imported goods direct sales center in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone once set off citizens’ enthusiasm for buying. After that, Chongqing took the lead in extending bonded goods to the main urban area (non-bonded area) and built an “extension platform for the bonded goods display and transaction center outside the zone”. Guangzhou referred to Chongqing’s practice and launched the first local cross-border e-commerce O2O experience store, Meiyue Youxuan, in the core business district of Zhujiang New Town in January 2015. Since then, imported cross-border e-commerce O2O experience stores have blossomed in Guangzhou. A large number of offline experience stores such as Fengxinzi, Modern Department Store, and Guangbaihui have opened one after another, and there has even been a grand occasion of 8 experience stores opening at the same time within 10 days. In addition, some experience stores in Guangzhou have also vigorously expanded the national market and exported the cross-border e-commerce O2O model to other provinces and cities. For example, Fengxinzi has opened a store in Xiamen in addition to its layout in Guangzhou. It can be seen that although Guangzhou’s attempt at import cross-border e-commerce O2O was later than Chongqing’s, it ignited this model and promoted it nationwide.
From these two characteristics, it can be seen that Guangzhou is more “daring” in developing cross-border e-commerce. In this case, any pre-established system is in dynamic adjustment until the norms mature.