China’s Imports of Cross-border e-Commerce Transactions Continue to Expand in 2020

Cross-border e-commerce can be divided into B2B model, B2C model, and C2C model. In recent years, China’s cross-border e-commerce industry has continuously developed, and the market scale has continued to expand. In 2018, China’s cross-border e-commerce retail import and export transactions exceeded 100 billion yuan. In 2019, China’s cross-border e-commerce retail import and export volume reached 186.21 billion yuan, five times that of 2015, with an average annual growth rate of 49.5%.

With the increase of cross-border e-commerce test areas, China’s cross-border e-commerce market will further expand. In 2020, the volume of import and export transactions is expected to reach 280 billion yuan.

From the perspective of the cross-border e-commerce import and export structure, China’s cross-border e-commerce exports still dominate. In recent years, the proportion of exports has been declining slowly, while imports have been increasing. On the whole, the proportion of China’s cross-border e-commerce import and export structure accounts for nearly 80% of exports, while imports only exceed 20%.

Import Cross-border e-Commerce Market Analysis

Since 2013, imported cross-border e-commerce platforms have gradually emerged, cross-border online shopping users have also increased year by year, and the size of the imported cross-border e-commerce market has grown rapidly. According to the data, the scale of China’s imported cross-border e-commerce transactions is about 2.4 trillion yuan in 2019, and it is expected to reach 296.6 trillion yuan in 2020.

In 2019, China’s cross-border online shopping has more than 100 million users. It is predicted that by 2020 China’s frequent cross-border online shopping will exceed 170 million users. As the user base grows larger, its growth rate will gradually decrease and then tend to ease in the future.

At present, there are many cross-border e-commerce platforms in China, and market competition is also fierce. Overall, NetEase Koala, Haidun Global, and Tmall International rank the first echelon of cross-border e-commerce. Ocean Pier, Vipshop, Xiaohongshu, etc. are in the second echelon.

Cross-border e-Commerce Imports Continue to Expand

From 2008 to 2012, my country’s export cross-border e-commerce accounted for more than 90%, and imported e-commerce is still a relatively new market in China. In recent years, as the domestic market’s demand for overseas commodities has increased, the proportion of cross-border e-commerce import transactions has been increasing. In 2013, the scale of cross-border e-commerce import transactions accounted for 14.3%, which exceeded 20% by 2018.

At present, China’s cross-border e-commerce is still export-oriented, but the growth rate of import scale is faster than that of export scale. The growing scale of cross-border imports of e-commerce has followed the trend of overseas purchases. It is a response to China’s vast overseas commodity demand market. There is plenty of room for development to be tapped. It is expected that the proportion of imports will continue to increase.