PARADISE FOR IMPORTS
Cross-border e-commerce thrives in Chongqing Free Trade Port Area
Alarge warehouse stocked with imported products, including baby formula, diapers, cereal and healthcare products, sits in the Lianglu-cuntan Free Trade Port Area (FTPA) of west China’s Chongqing Municipality. The warehouse provides services for major cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Tmall.com, Vip.com and Xiaohongshu.com.
“The design capacity of the warehouse is 2.5 million items but now it holds 3.5 million items because major e-commerce platforms are bracing themselves for the upcoming November 11 shopping festival,” said Zhuang Ting, General Manager of the Chongqing Gangteng Supply-chain Management Co. Ltd., in an interview with Beijing Review, a month ahead of the festival. The event was launched by ecommerce giant Alibaba in 2009 and has since grown into the biggest shopping day on Earth.
The busy warehouse exemplifies how cross-border e-commerce has thrived in the FTPA in the past few years and Zhuang has witnessed a dramatic transformation as a result.
A booming sector
A Chongqing native, the 31-year-old started working at the FTPA, which is part of the China (Chongqing) Pilot Free Trade Zone, in 2011 after resigning from an IT company. “At the time, the cross-border trade in the zone involved only red wine,” Zhuang recalled.
Back then, cross-border e-commerce platforms were rare in China and in order to buy products from abroad, many resorted to daigou, shopping agents who bought products overseas and sold them to domestic consumers. However, the practice was problematic since taxes were often evaded and fake and shoddy products were prevalent.
To solve the problem, the Ministry of Commerce and the General Administration of Customs selected five trial cities for