At the 2nd China-Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) Expo, one of the most shining exhibitions is cross-border e-commerce.  

Cross-border e-commerce sprouted around the year 2000. China's first cross-border e-commerce platform was launched in Shanghai in 2013. Subsequently, such business has grown rapidly in China.

With the COVID-19 pandemic rampaging around the world, the irresistible cross-border e-commerce has become a new growth pole for China's foreign trade. Huang Qifan, vice chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, predicted that about 50 percent of China's foreign trade will be conducted through cross-border e-commerce by 2035.  

Rising star city Ningbo in east China's Zhejiang Province, one of the earliest cities with comprehensive trial area for cross-border e-commerce, takes the lead in bringing cross-border e-commerce to China-CEEC trade. 

In the first quarter of 2021, Zhejiang's cross-border e-commerce exports reached nearly 45 billion yuan ($7.05 billion), up by 78 percent year on year. Cross-border e-commerce became a major part of China's trade with the CEEC.  

"Lots of traditional foreign trade enterprises and manufacturing companies have turned to cross-border e-commerce over the last two years. There are now more than 120,000 active export online stores on major third-party platforms in Zhejiang Province. We have also built overseas warehouses for cross-border e-commerce," said Sheng Qiuping, director-general of Department of Commerce of Zhejiang Province. 

Overseas warehouses, as mentioned, is a warehousing and logistics node aiming to improve order delivery capacity. It usually provides for overseas goods storage, product processing, local distribution and post-sales services. 

In the future, with the trend of trade digitalization, cross-border e-commerce and overseas warehouses will better help small- and medium-sized enterprises to establish foreign trade platforms and fuel China's foreign trade.