Trade and innovation is an inherent requirement for promoting high-quality development in an all-round way, an important support for accelerating the construction a new pattern of development, and an active move to respond to changes in the international economic and trade situation. The "14th Five-Year" Plan proposes to "prom the innovation and development of trade", and calls for "enhancing the functions of trade promotion platforms and supporting the development of new formats such as cross-border e-commerce" The Central Economic Work Conference has made important arrangements for "encouraging and supporting service exports and actively developing digital trade and green trade". Cross-border e-commerce is the force of China's foreign trade development and also an important trend of international trade development. Better play the unique role of cross-border e-commerce in empowering small and medium- foreign trade enterprises, promoting the internationalization of industries and ensuring the security of supply chains, and further promote trade and innovation is an important part of doing a good job in foreign trade next year.

During the "14th Five-Year" period, China's cross-border e-commerce potential in "selling to the world" will be released, and its advantages in "buying from the world" will also continue to play.

Cross-border e-commerce has become an important engine driving trade growth. In 2024, China's-border e-commerce imports and exports amounted to about 2.7 trillion yuan, an increase of 67 percent over 2020. In the three quarters of 2025, China's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports amounted to about 2.06 trillion yuan, a yearon-year increase of 6.4 percent. According to preliminary statistics, by the first half of 2024, the total number of cross-border e-commerce across the country had exceeded 120,000, and more than 2,500 overseas warehouses had been established, covering an area of more than30 million square meters. Cross-border e-commerce is also an important carrier for the dual-circulation of domestic and international markets. China's cross-border ecommerce platforms are evolving from B2C (business to consumer) to B2B (business to business) mode, with the B2B model accounting for more than two-. It covers not only general consumer goods trade but also involves the import and export of goods such as mechanical and electrical products, energy and mineral resources, and agricultural products. Platform rely on technologies such as data, computing power, algorithms, and artificial intelligence to build a digital supply chain system, which can enhance the interaction effect between the domestic and international markets and, promote precise docking between international customer demand and domestic enterprise supply, and significantly improve the quality and efficiency of the domestic circulation and the international circulation.
At the same time e-commerce platforms have become the organizers, managers, and leaders of supply chains. At present, some of the leading e-commerce platforms in various industries have become a new generation comprehensive and integrated e-commerce, namely "goods trade   service trade" and "industrial Internet   consumer Internet." The leading e-commerce platforms can connect upstream and downstream manufacturers and various service providers, build an industrial and trade ecology that is fully integrated, and lead enterprises in the industrial chain to jointly develop the international market. For instance, a e-commerce platform can organize the supply chain management and services of the whole process, including R&D and design, raw material procurement, production and manufacturing, warehousing and, display and trading, credit financing, customs declaration and tax refund, brand promotion, and global sales, so that small and medium-sized enterprises in the industrial chain can effectively reduce costs and improve the speed, efficiency, and quality of product innovation.
During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, the bottlenecks and shortcomings of China's cross-border e- development are still prominent, and the external environment challenges are even more severe.
Looking at the development of cross-border e-commerce itself, first, there is still significant gap in comprehensive competitiveness compared to developed countries. Data shows that in 2024, four Chinese enterprises entered the list of the world's top ten cross-border-commerce platforms, but the total commodity transaction volume only accounted for 27% of that of the American Amazon company. Second, the business model is relatively extensive, and transformation upgrading are particularly urgent. Cross-border e-commerce platform enterprises are mainly small, medium, and micro enterprises, and the import and export commodities are mainly traditional consumer goods such asiles, home furnishings, cosmetics, food, and digital products. The competition among commodities for the same market, low price competition, and "internal friction" competition are particularly fierce. enterprises lack the ability to expand international channels. Third, the problem of talent shortage is prominent. There are still large gaps in digital technology talents such as big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, as well as in professional talents such as foreign languages, live broadcasting, and international marketing, law, etc. Fourth, due to the lack of fixed assets for, financing difficulties, and high financing costs are more prominent among small and medium-sized e-commerce enterprises. Fifth, the overseas service guarantee system is still not sound. In terms cross-border payment system and international logistics distribution service system, it mainly relies on overseas payment and logistics systems, which increases the payment cost and cargo loss risk of e-commerce enterprises and the difficulty and cost of overseas rights protection for enterprises are high. Sixth, the platform data is not fully utilized, and the value of data elements is not fully released
From the international perspective, the increase of unstable and uncertain factors in the international market and the rising risk of overseas business operations of e-commerce enterprises. On the one hand, the number of international economic and trade restrictive measures has increased, and a number of countries and regions have introduced restrictive policies on cross-border e-. For instance, the United States has officially terminated the policy of exempting small parcels from China with a value of no more than 800 US dollars from customs duties the European Union has implemented the General Product Safety Regulation, imposing more stringent safety requirements on consumer goods. On the other hand, the United States, Japan and the European Union are still main markets for China's cross-border e-commerce, and trade frictions are likely to further increase due to the rise of protectionism, geopolitical turmoil and other, and trade disputes involving product price dumping, counterfeiting and the green trade and data security compliance review may further increase.
In view of this, we must make use of China's advantages of super large-scale market, complete industrial system and abundant human resources, strive to break through the bottlenecks, make up for the shortcomings and weak, promote the optimization, expansion and strengthening of China's cross-border e-commerce, and effectively improve the level of trade digitalization.
First, encourage e-commerce platforms to develop on a large scale, integrate, and provide full-link services. Building an independent controllable international supply chain with enterprises as the core is an important way to enhance China's trade and industrial competitiveness and maintain the security of industrial and supply chains. In recent years e-commerce platform enterprises have shown a tendency to develop on a large scale, with an increasing number of mergers and acquisitions and a higher market concentration. Super-large e-commerce enterprises are increasingly becoming an important force for a country to participate in the international competition of digital trade. We need to promote e-commerce platform enterprises to expand their large-scale through mergers and acquisitions, solve the problems of "small, scattered, and disorderly", encourage leading enterprises to improve their resource integration capabilities and data services capabilities, improve the level international supply chain management, empower the development of enterprises in the industrial chain in all aspects, and create an international supply chain ecosystem that leads the development of trade and industry, has international, and is independent and controllable.
Second, encourage cross-border e-commerce to empower industry development. In recent years, e-commerce platforms have continuously deepened "trade   industry chain" model, effectively driving the export of local industrial products and characteristic agricultural products, and becoming a new carrier for the internationalization of local characteristic industries and new channel for farmers to increase their income and become rich. We need to actively promote the deep integration of cross-border e-commerce with the industry, shape the advantages of ecommerce development based on the industrial cluster foundation, support platform enterprises to integrate and penetrate into various industries, and continuously enrich the application scenarios. We should vigorously develop "cross-border-commerce   industrial belt", promote the integrated development of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive experimental zones, cross-border e-commerce industrial parks, etc., and industrial, and make e-commerce a backbone force to promote the export of local characteristic products and industries.
Third, encourage e-commerce platforms to open data resources to empower export enterprises. Huge data is the core resource and unique advantage platform enterprises, and effective development and utilization of these data resources to enhance the competitiveness of export enterprises in new product development, international market development and other aspects is an important way to high-quality trade development. It is necessary to further improve the incentive mechanism for platform data to be open and shared, optimize the open environment of platform data, encourage platform enterprises to data resources, tap the value of data, create a trusted data space, build a data industry chain of data storage, processing, processing and application, and form high-quality data to provide data services for enterprises to analyze international markets and develop and design new products.
Fourth, improve the policy support and service system for cross-border e-commerce Guide e-commerce enterprises to operate in good faith, establish good reputation for Chinese goods and brands, and improve consumer rights protection measures; guide e-commerce enterprises to operate legally andly overseas, and strengthen compliance training on the laws and regulations of the host country; unblock the credit data system in the fields of customs, logistics, and payment, and convenience for financing for e-commerce platform enterprises; improve the overseas service system, strengthen the construction of overseas warehouses, support logistics enterprises to "go out", and enhance the capability of domestic cross-border payment platforms. At the same time, it is also necessary to improve the overseas risk prevention and control system, improve the overseas legal aid system, and a favorable environment for the overseas development of e-commerce enterprises.