China ASEAN Photo:VCG

A batch of new cross-border e-commerce projects between China and ASEAN were announced over the weekend at the 2023 China-ASEAN Silk Road E-commerce Forum being held in Nanning, South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

As a sub-event under the 20th China-ASEAN Expo and China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit, the forum aimed to promote cross-border e-commerce opportunities and the new industrial ecosystem between China and ASEAN members. More than 300 government representatives, experts and scholars, industry insiders, and key e-commerce platform companies from China and ASEAN member countries participated in the forum.

New services and projects are being unveiled at the forum. The highlights include the launch of a digital channel cross-border e-commerce service center to provide a one-stop solution for the increasing cross-border e-commerce service needs of Chinese and ASEAN enterprises.

Also unveiled was the China-ASEAN digital economy industrial park e-commerce exchange center, meant to accelerate the training of digital e-commerce talent and promote cooperation. 

The new programs will help meet the growing demand for cross-border e-commerce between China and ASEAN, driven by the building of the version 3.0 of the China-ASEAN free trade agreement and the implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and they will take cooperation to a new stage, Wang Peng, an associate research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Sunday.

The overall trend in recent years has been the continuous growth of cross-border e-commerce, with an increasing variety of types, Wang said.

"In the past, it may have been more focused on China importing agricultural and sideline products from Southeast Asia, while exporting a large number of light industrial products. But now there's also a significant amount of services and digital trade," Wang said

Cooperation between Guangxi and ASEAN in e-commerce has been accelerating. In 2022, total cross-border e-commerce trade in Guangxi stood at 17.96 billion yuan ($2.46 billion), with year-on-year growth of 89.8 percent. Imports and exports with ASEAN members accounted for over 90 percent of the total.

In recent years, Guangxi, bordering Vietnam, has vigorously developed cross-border e-commerce, with 12 cities in the autonomous region being approved as national comprehensive pilot zones for cross-border e-commerce. Eight cities are included in the pilot program for cross-border e-commerce retail imports. 

Additionally, Guangxi has set up 20 cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouses in countries such as Thailand and Vietnam, as part of the continuous efforts to accelerate the construction of a cross-border e-commerce logistics system and hub center targeting the ASEAN region. 

Global Times