At a series of press conferences on the theme of “Promoting High-Quality Development” held by the State Information Office, the General Administration of Customs revealed that, according to the latest statistics from the General Administration of Customs, the total import and export of cross-border e-commerce in China in the first half of 2024 amounted to RMB 1.22 trillion, which is a remarkable growth of 10.5% compared with the same period of last year. This growth rate not only far exceeded market expectations, but also exceeded the overall growth rate of China’s foreign trade by 4.4 percentage points during the same period, fully demonstrating the resilience and vitality of cross-border e-commerce in the complex and volatile international trade environment.
The booming development of cross-border e-commerce has brought brand new challenges to customs supervision services. Now the annual volume of cross-border e-commerce and cross-border mail express parcels supervised by the Customs reaches more than 7 billion pieces, with an average of about 20 million pieces per day.
In this regard, the Customs has also continued to innovate supervision methods, develop and apply cross-border e-commerce customs clearance service systems, and strive to improve the efficiency of cross-border e-commerce customs clearance. At the same time, practical measures have also been taken to ensure fast clearance and control.
Since 2018, China’s cross-border e-commerce import and export scale has continued to expand, and by the end of 2023, compared with five years ago, it had realized a significant growth of 1.2 times, and the fast growth rate was figuratively called “acceleration” by the industry.
It is worth noting that the rapid development of cross-border e-commerce has also led to the synergistic development of logistics, payment, big data, cloud computing and other related industrial chains, forming a cross-border e-commerce ecosystem, and injecting a new impetus for the high-quality development of the economy. The government level is also constantly optimizing the policy environment, increasing the construction of comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zones, promoting the continuous improvement of the level of trade facilitation, and creating a more fair, transparent and predictable business environment for cross-border e-commerce enterprises.
It was emphasized at the meeting that, as a next step, the Customs will earnestly study and implement the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, and continuously improve the customs supervision system conducive to the development of cross-border e-commerce. At present, the General Administration of Customs is studying the promotion of the mode of “inspection before shipment” for cross-border e-commerce exports, as well as expanding the scope of the pilot scheme of cross-border e-commerce retail export returns across customs zones, and other measures.
The General Administration of Customs will also continue to optimize and improve the function of the Customs cross-border e-commerce customs clearance service system, to further simplify the process, optimize the service, and better meet the needs of consumers and enterprises to “buy the world, sell the world”. In short, it is to make everyone’s shopping experience smoother and help China’s cross-border e-commerce continue to develop at a high quality.
Source: Global