Beijing 2nd August, 2023 (WAM) --  China's cross-border e-commerce has experienced rapid growth in recent years, emerging as a pivotal driver for the high-quality advancement of the nation's foreign trade, the China-based People's Daily.

China's cross-border e-commerce jumped 16 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2023 to 1.1 trillion yuan (US$153.9 billion). Of these, exports through e-commerce increased by 19.9 percent to 821 billion yuan, while imports reached 276 billion yuan, up 5.7 percent.

The value of the country's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports exceeded two trillion yuan for the first time in 2022, reaching 2.1 trillion yuan, an increase of 7.1 percent compared to 2021, according to customs data. Last year, the country's cross-border e-commerce accounted for 4.9 percent of its total foreign trade.

Data from the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) showed that the proportion of trade through cross-border e-commerce in China's total foreign trade has risen from less than 1 percent in 2018 to about 5 percent at present.

"Cross-border e-commerce, as a new form of foreign trade, is becoming the new normal of foreign trade," said Zhao Ping, President of the Academy of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.

According to Zhao, there are three trends in the development of cross-border e-commerce, namely, the normalisation of market demand, increasingly improved bilateral and multilateral rules, and the rise of independent cross-border e-commerce sites.