The Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee clearly pointed out that it is necessary to “innovate and develop digital trade and promote the construction of a comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zone. We will build a commodity trading center, a global distribution center, support the orderly layout of overseas circulation facilities by various entities, and support the construction of international logistics hubs and commodity resource allocation hubs in qualified areas. Improve the trade risk prevention and control mechanism and improve the export control system and trade remedy system.
From last year’s Central Economic Work Conference to this year’s government work report, and then to this “Decision”, the development of cross-border e-commerce has been emphasized, and the relevant work arrangements have become more and more specific, indicating that cross-border e-commerce has been highly valued both this year’s specific work and the medium-and long-term planning for the next five years.
In recent years, cross-border e-commerce has developed rapidly. According to statistics, from 2018 to 2023, the total import and export volume of cross-border e-commerce in China increased from 1.06 trillion yuan to 2.38 trillion yuan, doubling in five years; Except for 2021, the growth rate of other years far exceeds the growth rate of China’s total import and export; Even in 2022, the lowest growth rate, the growth rate reached 9.8%; The proportion of China’s total import and export has also increased from 3.46% in 2018 to 5.66% in 2023. The domestic well-known cross-border e-commerce platform is growing rapidly in the global business and its international influence continues to expand.
The rapid growth of cross-border e-commerce is a reflection of China’s new advantages in foreign trade development. At present, China’s per capita GDP has reached the world average level, and the endowment structure of various production factors has become more balanced, and the advantage of relying on the advantage of low-cost labor to reduce the production cost of labor-intensive products has been greatly weakened. While China’s export commodity structure is undergoing upgrading, traditional trade industries are also urgently looking for new comparative advantages.
And this new advantage is the comprehensive cost advantage caused by the division of labor. This is because China has a special national condition and faces a special opportunity. The special national condition is the huge population size and the domestic market size, which is particularly conducive to the mutual promotion between the domestic division of labor and the economies of scale, which greatly enhances the benefits of division of labor. The special opportunity is the extensive use of digital technology, which greatly reduces the cost of division of labor. Therefore, the level of domestic division of labor in China has been greatly improved. The improvement of domestic division of labor can reduce the comprehensive cost of industry and offset the increase of factor cost.
Digital platform is the concrete executor of division of labor. The platform gathers a large number of suppliers and demanders. The demanders send instructions through the platform, and the production factors on the supply side immediately start to work together to complete the tasks of the demanders. In this process, the digital technology functions such as mobile payment, express logistics, information communication, rapid response, demand forecasting and supply-demand matching are fully exerted, and the decline in transaction costs can partially offset the increase in the cost of production factors such as labor, thus maintaining the comprehensive cost advantage.
When the digital platform reaches the whole world, it can transfer the advantages of China’s domestic division of labor to foreign countries, and the cross-border e-commerce platform becomes such a carrier and medium. One end of the cross-border e-commerce platform is connected with domestic industrial belts or industrial clusters, and the other end is connected with foreign markets, which has become an important platform for matching and docking domestic supply and foreign demand in the digital age. At present, the country promotes the development of “cross-border e-commerce+industrial belt” mode, which is to accelerate the upgrading of the industrial belt or industrial cluster that was originally concentrated in geographical space to digital space, so as to make the so-called external economies of scale brought about by the division of labor within or between industrial belts and industrial clusters better play, and then maintain the comprehensive cost advantage of industries, thus successfully realizing the transformation of domestic industrial advantages from low-cost production factors to division of labor.
The Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee used a lot of words to express the support for logistics at home and abroad in the development of cross-border e-commerce, such as “building a commodity trading center, building a global distribution center, and supporting various entities to arrange overseas circulation facilities in an orderly manner”. In such an important programmatic document, such specific strokes were used to support cross-border e-commerce to build overseas logistics facilities, which fully demonstrated the state’s support for the further accelerated development of cross-border e-commerce.
In recent years, the development of domestic e-commerce is changing with each passing day, which greatly facilitates people’s production and life, so that people can quickly get the delivery of services just by clicking on the platform with their fingers. Among them, the rapid development of domestic logistics has played an irreplaceable role, because logistics is one of the most important links in the product delivery stage, and the cost of logistics essentially determines the cost of the whole business. This can be seen from the number of express parcels in China every year in recent years.
From 2011 to 2023, China’s express delivery volume increased from 3.67 billion pieces to 132.07 billion pieces, the cost of single-piece express delivery decreased from 20.65 yuan to 9.14 yuan, and the annual per capita express delivery usage increased from 2.7 pieces to 94 pieces. In order to pursue further development of cross-border e-commerce in the future, it is very important to lay out foreign logistics systems and infrastructure, so as to further reduce the delivery cost of products to consumers, so that foreign consumers can receive the ordered products at lower cost and faster, thus further reducing the trade cost. This “Decision” makes specific arrangements for this work, which is of great significance. If this work and goal are specifically implemented and realized, then the cross-border e-commerce in China is expected to have a restructuring impact on the global logistics industry, and make the application of digital technology for many years refine the domestic division of labor and expand it to the world. If decades ago, China introduced foreign technology, resources and industries through reform and opening up, which greatly promoted the domestic industrial division of labor in China, and China was thus fully integrated into the global economy, then the current and future development of cross-border e-commerce in China and the layout of overseas logistics will further refine the domestic division of labor in China and inject some new kinetic energy into global economic growth.