With a negative growth rate of 80% in the first half of the year, how can "new foreign trade" be achieved?

Alibaba International, the world's largest B2B cross-border e-commerce platform, saw a year-on-year growth (in dollar terms) in the first half of this year of 80 percent, three times the industry's average growth rate.

According to the General Administration of Customs, in the first half of the year, general trade imports and exports fell 2.6 percent, accounting for 60.1 percent of China's total foreign trade. Imports and exports of processing trade fell by 8%, accounting for 23.6%. The import and export of cross-border e-commerce increased by 26.2%, which was the only major trade mode with a positive growth rate, and the growth rate was much higher than that of the foreign trade market.

Driven by the epidemic, the expanding cross-border e-commerce, together with general trade and processing trade, has made concerted efforts to "stabilize foreign trade" and further establish a new pattern of "tripartite confrontation".

New digital foreign trade represented by cross-border e-commerce has become a major trend in the development of world trade. On July 14, McKinsey released a report on B2B sales trends, saying that remote sales channels are becoming more and more important, and countries' B2B transaction communication mode is shifting from traditional mode to digital mode. As the world's most important cross-border e-commerce market, China is a leader in new global foreign trade.

New non-contact foreign trade is more suitable for the needs of epidemic prevention and control. It's just a facade. New foreign trade is a new model, because it has carried on the profound reconstruction to the traditional trade business flow, logistics, capital flow, business scene and even the human behavior itself.

You don't have to buy a plane ticket to travel to the exhibition to get orders and send millions of dollars to customers you've never met, relying on digital technology. People do business with big data through digital operations tools, and the new data continue to accumulate the credit assets of each enterprise.

Digital technology makes foreign trade business more cost-effective. The intelligent product delivery system launched by Alibaba International Site on global cross-border e-commerce has been tested, and the overall release efficiency has been increased by 40%. Merchants can save about 10,000 yuan of labor cost per month. Moreover, the ordering rate of intelligent products is 217% higher than that of the buyers of artificial products.

Digital technology has made foreign trade easier. The full-link digital cross-border supply chain service system built by Alibaba International Station can intelligently recommend reliable logistics for merchants, and the customs, foreign exchange and tax affairs involved in domestic and foreign supervision are finally no longer complicated. Damoyuan's blockchain technology reduces the verification time of export tax rebates to "0 days".

Since the outbreak of the epidemic, the policy direction to support the development of new foreign trade has always been clear: from the establishment of a comprehensive test zone for cross-border e-commerce, to the implementation of cross-border E-COMMERCE B2B export supervision pilot. The Canton Fair was transferred to online exhibitions, and alibaba International site hosted 20 online exhibitions such as Alibaba.com. Together, government and enterprise will continue to release more dividends.

Rwandan students from Alibaba Business School attend a live training on Alibaba International

Since the epidemic, traditional foreign trade enterprises have turned to new foreign trade. In the first half of this year, more than 10,000 traditional foreign trade enterprises have set up shop in international stations. On July 17, Alibaba International set up a special subsidy of 1 billion yuan to provide a six-month transformation escort for traditional foreign trade enterprises that used to obtain overseas orders only through exhibitions.

Barriers to new foreign trade are low and falling, whether at the policy, technical or commercial level. This is particularly important - people on different starting lines, the "second generation of workers" in Dongguan and the "second generation of factories" in Fujian, can equally compete for the global dream, create new growth in foreign trade on a large scale and share the dividends of the digital economy.