BEIJING, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Despite the fact that cross-border e-commerce has already flourished in China, market players still stepped up new platform debut to offer more choices for Chinese brands to explore global market.
Recently, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba built for the first time system connection between Lazada, its controlled Southeast Asia-focusing cross-border e-commerce platform, and Tmall to help the latter's sellers easily access the Southeast Asian market.
Moreover, its B2B wholesale marketplace 1688 reported a cross-border e-commerce AI agent named "Aoxia", which was predicted by market players to go online in this November.
Experts said that more players in cross-border e-commerce sector not only facilitate Chinese merchandises' entering into global market, but also enrich consumption choices for overseas buyers.
-- Entering new markets in an easier way
A source familiar with Lazada and Tmall inter-connection said that the program was jointly launched by the two sides.
Currently, through a special web page opened at merchants' back-end without extra operation costs, sellers only need to send goods to domestic warehouses and the following overseas logistics, after-sale services and advertising will all be done by the platforms, according to the source.
At a time when brand building has entered its golden era, Lazada possesses stronger internally coordinated support, introduced Wei Meng, president of Lazada, saying that behind the "easy outgoing with one key-press" are two key pillars.
As Wei told, one is internal coordination meaning that Tmall customer service staff will participate deeply in the program and select quality and the most suitable brands to take part in the program. The other is the inter-linking of systems and AI assistance, helping Tmall sellers obtain a "twin store" on Lazada.
Data with AliExpress, nicknamed the "international version of Taobao" for individual shoppers under Alibaba, showed that in the first half of 2025, the number of brand operators on the platform surged 70 percent on year and over 2,000 brands accessed new markets, of which 500-plus reaped over 100 percent sales rise.
This file photo taken in 2024 shows a European championship special line launched by AliExpress and Cainiao in Dongguan, south China's Guangdong Province. (Cainiao/Handout via Xinhua)
-- Providing complete outgoing strategies
From product export to brand going global, it is the resilient underlying supply chains and cross-border e-commerce platforms that back up Chinese brands' outgoing journeys.
After launching a super plan on brands going global on September 23, AliExpress, also one of the top four cross-border e-commerce platforms in China, made a fundamental change and provided brand operators with systematic going global strategies.
Instead of requiring sellers to adapt to operation requirements of platforms and relying on big promotion events to shore up sales, AliExpress is undergoing a bottom-to-ceiling brand building upgrading, said Yan Zhi, who is in charge of AliExpress' brand going global business.
AliExpress is going to be the second growth curve for brands seeking outgoing and offers brand operators a new choice when deciding to go global, noted Yan.
Previously, ThinkRider, a Chinese smart bike trainer brand that already settled on AliExpress, vowed to rake in as high as 100 million yuan overseas revenue via AliExpress this year.
When talking about the "small target", its founder Yu Liquan was confident, saying that overseas outdoor sports market is maturer and in spite that overseas sales of star products of ThinkRider are still in the budding stage, exponential sales growth is not far away as long as its reputation is built among overseas users.
At present, an overarching task of ThinkRider is to heighten brand visibility together with AliExpress, held Yu, adding that in his eyes, a large number of Chinese brands have outgoing opportunities and brand building-based development has become an irreversible trend.
-- Updating preferential policies
In the first half of 2025, imports and exports through China's cross-border e-commerce operators mounted up to a new all-time high over the past comparable periods at 1.3 trillion yuan.
Prior to the eye-catching data release, Chinese regulators at different levels have been mapping out new preferential policies for cross-border e-commerce since the beginning of 2025.
Regardless of others, State Council, the Chinese cabinet, approved in April establishing comprehensive pilot zones for cross-border e-commerce in 15 Chinese cities and regions.
Later in June, seven local policymakers in south China-located Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region issued measures to advance high-quality development of local cross-border e-commerce.
Apart from spurring boosters for the real economy, Guangxi initiated together with cross-border e-commerce operators a series of industrial belts-related activities to promote export of products from local characteristic and advantageous industries.
In August, Beijing Municipal Commerce Bureau also released an action plan alike, proposing explicitly to craft a new highland for innovation of cross-border e-commerce that is based in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, serves the entire nation and is closely connected with global market.
Others such as Hangzhou Customs rolled out 10 measures to improve from multiple aspects such as mode innovation, service capacity enhancement, and supervisory rules optimization to improve facilitation to cross-border e-commerce trade.
In the future, more preferential policies are likely to debut to gratify development demand of cross-border e-commerce operators, said industry experts, highlighting that together with flexible corporate strategy adjustment, a dual-wheel driven effect is emerging in aiding high-quality development of Chinese brands.
(Edited by Duan Jing with Xinhua Silk Road, duanjing@xinhua.org)
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