Ministry Of Commerce And Other Six Departments: Re Expansion Of Cross Border E-Commerce Retail Import

The Ministry of Commerce and other six departments recently issued the notice on expanding the pilot projects of cross-border e-commerce retail import and strictly implementing the regulatory requirements. The pilot scope of cross-border e-commerce retail import will be expanded to all cities and regions where free trade pilot zones, cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones, comprehensive bonded zones, import trade promotion innovation demonstration zones and bonded logistics centers (type b) are located.

Relevant experts said that speeding up the development of new formats and models such as cross-border e-commerce is conducive to improving the level of opening up, promoting the steady growth of foreign trade import and export and the growth of new momentum, and increasing consumption and employment. With the continuous improvement of China's cross-border e-commerce retail import policy system, in the future, it will play a better role in enriching the domestic market supply, driving the development of related industries, and better meeting the needs of the people for a better life.

Cross border e-commerce becomes a new engine of foreign trade development

In recent years, the pace of China's trade innovation and development has accelerated, and cross-border e-commerce has maintained a rapid growth, which has become a new engine of China's foreign trade development. Last year, the new crown pneumonia epidemic worldwide, cross-border e-commerce showed strong vitality, become the first choice for enterprises to carry out international trade. According to the data, in 2020, China's cross-border e-commerce import and export reached 1.69 trillion yuan, an increase of 31.1%.

It is understood that in November 2018, the Ministry of Commerce and other six departments issued a cross-border e-commerce retail import supervision policy, which was implemented in 37 cities such as Beijing, and further expanded to 86 cities and Hainan Island in 2020.

Hong Yong, an associate researcher at the E-commerce Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, said that the expansion of the pilot scope of cross-border e-commerce retail import is a specific measure to implement "building a new development pattern with domestic big cycle as the main body and domestic and international dual circulation promoting each other".

"This expansion is the implementation and continuation of the previous relevant policies." Hong Yong said. In January 2019, the State Council issued several opinions on promoting the high-level opening and high-quality development of comprehensive bonded areas, proposing to gradually realize the comprehensive bonded areas to fully apply the cross-border e-commerce retail import policy. In December 2019, the State Council issued the "reply on Approving the establishment of comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zones in Shijiazhuang and other 24 cities", proposing that comprehensive experimental zones with regulatory conditions should be included in the pilot scope of cross-border e-commerce retail import. In November 2020, Li Xingqian, director general of the foreign trade department of the Ministry of Commerce, also said that the construction of pilot free trade zones, comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zones and comprehensive bonded zones would be taken into consideration, and cities that meet the conditions would be included in the pilot scope of cross-border e-commerce retail import.

"Further expansion of cross-border e-commerce retail import pilot is mainly determined by China's actual domestic consumption demand." Wei Hao, Professor of the school of economics and business administration of Beijing Normal University and director of the national import research center, said that as early as August 2019, the general office of the State Council issued the opinions on accelerating the development of circulation and promoting commercial consumption, which proposed to meet the consumer demand for high-quality foreign commodities. Considering the development characteristics and trends of pilot free trade zones and comprehensive bonded zones, we will expand the scope of pilot cities for cross-border e-commerce retail imports, and promptly adjust and expand the list of cross-border e-commerce retail imports.

According to Wei Hao's analysis, in recent years, China's residents' income level has gradually increased, and the phenomenon of consumption upgrading has become prominent. Import characteristics and high-end products have become an important means to meet the domestic consumption upgrading. On the basis of traditional import mode, actively developing cross-border e-commerce retail import can promote the expansion of high-quality commodity import scale and improve people's living standards.

In addition, "this expansion reflects the effectiveness of China's pilot project of cross-border e-commerce retail import in the early stage, and has confidence in the guarantee of relevant regulatory capacity after the pilot implementation." Hong Yong said.

Ensure continuity and stability of regulatory arrangements

With the rapid development of cross-border e-commerce, under the regulatory guiding principle of "encouraging innovation, inclusiveness and prudence", China's supervision of cross-border e-commerce retail import has roughly gone through two stages. First, the interim arrangement of "temporary supervision of personal goods" was implemented from May 2016; second, in November 2018, six departments issued the notice on improving the supervision of cross-border e-commerce retail import for the first time, which clearly stipulated that the import goods of cross-border e-commerce retail import should be supervised according to personal use, and the requirements for approval, registration or filing of the first import license were not implemented The continuous stability of regulatory arrangements after the transition period.

In terms of Import Supervision, the notice proposes that after the expansion, the relevant cities and regions can carry out online bonded import (customs supervision mode code 1210) after confirming that they meet the regulatory requirements. Online bonded import mode refers to the mode in which cross-border e-commerce enterprises deliver goods from overseas to domestic warehouses through centralized procurement, and the logistics companies directly distribute goods to customers from the warehouse when consumers place online orders. Hong Yong said that the expansion of the pilot scope of online shopping bonded import mode will greatly benefit the healthy development of cross-border e-commerce retail import in the future.

In addition, during the expansion of the pilot scale of cross-border e-commerce retail import, it is specially proposed that each pilot city should earnestly bear the main responsibility, strictly implement the regulatory requirements, and timely investigate and deal with the illegal behaviors such as "online shopping bonded + offline self collection" and secondary sales outside the customs special supervision area, so as to ensure the smooth progress of the pilot project and promote the healthy and sustainable development of the industry norms. Bai Ming, deputy director of the International Market Research Institute of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, said, "the extent to which cross-border e-commerce import has been explored depends on the extent to which supervision should be followed up, so as to achieve healthy development.".

Let more countries share the super market dividend

"This expansion will promote the development of China's cross-border e-commerce import." Wei Hao's analysis shows that for cross-border e-commerce import enterprises, stabilizing their expectations of the whole industry is conducive to enterprises' more active long-term business planning and investment layout, so as to better seize the cross-border e-commerce import market and promote the growth of cross-border e-commerce retail import. For domestic consumers, there are more opportunities to try and use cross-border e-commerce retail imports for consumption, so as to contact more foreign high-quality products and stimulate potential consumption.

Hong Yong believes that the expansion of cross-border e-commerce retail import pilot will promote the coordinated development of regional economy in the eastern, central and western regions of China. Launching online bonded import business in the pilot areas will greatly save the cost of cross-border e-commerce logistics and shorten the time of cross-border e-commerce logistics, which is conducive to promoting cross-border e-commerce business of agricultural products, especially fresh agricultural products, and also conducive to cross-border e-commerce retail import commodities To improve customer satisfaction.

At the same time, China has the world's most growing domestic demand market, increasing the import of high-quality products, so that more countries can share the dividend of China's super large-scale market. "For foreign export enterprises, some enterprises are bound to seize this huge business opportunity, increase their export to China and expand the Chinese market. They will also pay more attention to the development of cross-border e-commerce retail business and connect with China's import enterprises, so as to promote the expansion of China's import scale." Wei Hao said.