As a new foreign trade infrastructure supporting the development of cross-border e-commerce, overseas warehouses are an important part of China’s new foreign trade format and new model, and are also the key to deal with the reconstruction of global economic and trade pattern and enhance foreign trade resilience. In recent years, under the background of the sustained release of policy dividends and the active layout of enterprises, overseas warehouses have achieved rapid development, led China’s new foreign trade formats to accelerate transformation and upgrading, and effectively hedged external risk shocks, which has become a new engine to promote the high-quality development of foreign trade.
Under the dual role of policy empowerment and market drive, China’s cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouses have achieved rapid expansion in scale and continuous optimization in layout, becoming a new engine for high-quality development of foreign trade, with remarkable results and steady situation. First, the scale has grown steadily and the global layout has continued to improve. Up to now, there are more than 1,800 overseas warehouses dedicated to serving cross-border e-commerce in China, with a total area of over 22 million square meters, which are widely distributed in various countries and regions, and a warehousing network covering the whole world has been built.
Second, the kinetic energy continued to be released, and the supporting role of foreign trade was prominent. Cross-border e-commerce as a growth point of foreign trade, the import and export volume increased from 1.69 trillion yuan to 2.75 trillion yuan from 2020 to 2025, with an average compound annual growth rate of over 10%, and the growth rate in 2025 was 0.8 percentage points higher than the national foreign trade. Overseas warehouses have expanded synchronously with the industry and entered the fast lane of development.
Third, the industry has made concerted efforts and the export vitality has been continuously enhanced. Relying on the advantages of advanced manufacturing industry, China’s B2B cross-border e-commerce has a leading international share, which has accelerated the export of overseas warehouses.
The rapid development of overseas warehouses has injected strong momentum into China’s foreign trade, but in the face of complex and severe international environment, its high-quality development still faces severe challenges. In the face of multiple challenges, it is urgent to promote the upgrading, optimization and upgrading of overseas warehouses, activate new kinetic energy of foreign trade development, and shape new advantages in international competition.
Optimize the global layout and expand emerging markets. Accelerate the layout of overseas warehouses in emerging markets, deepen cooperation with local logistics enterprises, and strengthen the storage network coverage of key countries such as Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam. We will improve tail-end logistics services such as warehousing, sorting and distribution, realize local stocking and local delivery, reduce operating costs and avoid tariff risks. Strengthen the collaborative planning of overseas warehouses and overseas parks, enhance the relevance and market complementarity with the host country’s resource endowment, industrial structure and economic characteristics, create distinctive development advantages, and avoid homogenization competition. Strengthen the analysis and evaluation of the host country’s macro environment, business environment, industry market and other external factors, improve the risk early warning and prevention and control mechanism, and provide guarantee for the stable operation of overseas warehouses.
Strengthen financial support and solve financing problems. Build a diversified financial service system covering the whole chain of operation, sales and logistics, innovate special credit, supply chain finance, financial leasing and other products, improve the financing evaluation mechanism according to the operational data such as enterprise order volume and performance limitation, and effectively alleviate the financial pressure of enterprises. Improve the facilitation level of RMB settlement of cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouses, and focus on supporting overseas warehouse enterprises to jointly build the “Belt and Road” national layout. Optimize financial services according to the differentiated stocking demand of B2B merchants, small and medium-sized sellers and other warehouse users, strengthen coordination with taxation and customs declaration departments, and effectively improve the capital turnover efficiency of enterprises through the one-stop service of “tax refund+financing”.
Deepen the green integration of science and technology and promote transformation and upgrading. Accelerate the digitalization and intelligent transformation of overseas warehouses, promote big data intelligent warehouse sharing and other modes, encourage small and medium-sized enterprises to jointly build and share intelligent overseas warehouses, and effectively reduce technology and operating costs. Promote the localization and adaptation of warehouse management system, optimize the multi-language operation function and national tax data interface, and improve the adaptability and stability of overseas warehouse operation.
Source: study times.
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