The 2nd APEC Cross-Border E-Commerce Training Workshop Concluded Successfully

The 2^nd APEC Cross-Border E-Commerce Training Workshop (APEC CBET II), hosted by Ministry of Commerce, People's Republic of China, supported by DHgate, Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, Peru, and Russia co-sponsoring, was successfully concluded in Beijing. Celebrity guest speakers, including famous scholars and experts, senior executives from trade associations and private sectors, shared unparalleled insights and experience in developing the digital economy. Government officials from more than 10 APEC economies, including Canada, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, and others, as well as multiple ministries and departments of PRC and other representatives, a total of more than 150 people, participated in the workshop.

The APEC CBET II covers a broad spectrum of topics, including challenges and opportunities of global trade, the APEC digital economy integration, trends of cross-border e-commerce, trade policies of improving the efficiency and management of supply chain, and reopening borders initiatives. Meanwhile, it also focuses on execution, from public policymaking, standard operation, innovative technology adoption, cross-border payments, financial loans, logistics construction, a new style of e-commerce, to the latest marketing trends. Mr. Song Yang, Director of Department of International Trade and Economic Affairs, Ministry of Commerce, said in his closing remarks, "This workshop identified precious takeaways of policy recommendations for boosting e-commerce and digital trade for the region in the context of the pandemic, which will profoundly benefit and shape APEC's future discussions in this regard."

According to a World Economic Forum report, the total global trade shrank by 8.9% in 2020, marking the worst recession since the 2008 financial crisis. However, innovative technologies represented by artificial intelligence (AI), digitalization, and the Internet are becoming critical driving forces for the development of APEC and even the global economy, and further bolster the paradigm upgrade of global economic growth, which will reshape organization methods, economic processes, and economic profit.

The changes also happen in the area of cross-border e-commerce. In August 2020, based on its strong technical capabilities and rich experience in the cross-border B2B practice, DHgate launched MyyShop, a decentralized cloud-based e-commerce SaaS solution that aims to help MSMEs, especially entry-level people and start-up micro merchants, and monetize their social networks. MyyShop provides intelligent selection and distribution services, enabling dropshippers to establish and scale their business environment quickly. It is committed to serving as a one-stop platform providing services ranging from interactive site building, source selection from reliable areas, selection of quality product to drop shipping, the best-in-class distribution system, and customer-friendly after-sales services. It also supports synchronization with users' other social media channels and e-commerce platform accounts to quickly monetize private domain traffic. Mr. Billy Deng, Vice President of DHgate, said at the APEC CBET II, "The pandemic-driven e-commerce boom has accelerated the growth of social e-commerce. MyyShop is an innovative supply chain solution in line with this global trend. We have helped more than 30,000 African MSMEs in 3 months to start up cross-border e-commerce businesses with a light budget. By 2025, MyyShop is expected to help 1.05 million MSMEs and individuals in Africa with this business model, which has strong innovation vitality and can be widely promoted to APEC economies as well."

To address the challenge that MSMEs always lack sufficient funds and credit for developing businesses, Ms. Zoe Zuo, Operation Director of Tuotuo Digital, shared the best practice of the e-commerce loan jointly launched with China Construction Bank. Leveraging the neural network-based big data model, Random Forest algorithm, and GBDT model, Tuotuo Digital has been able to use millisecond-level operation and massive data from various scenarios to establish an efficient risk control model. With an AI-assisted decision-making system, it can complete the integration of Loan/Repayment business between MSMEs and the bank within one second. While greatly simplifying and facilitating loans for MSMEs, it also soundly manages risks.

Impacted by COVID-19, the shortage of cross-border logistics capacity and surging prices have drawn much attention. In particular, the five-fold increase in shipping prices between China and the United States has become a hot topic. Mr. Oliver Wan, Head of DHLink of DHgate, called for regular meetings among governments of APEC economies to align policies and supervision of the logistics industry, give the international logistics industry more flexibility and development space in the region and make prices more affordable. The expenses must return to normal as soon as possible, which can help MSMEs and individual practitioners reduce operating costs.

About the Cross-Border-E-Commerce Training (CBET)

The project was launched by Ms. Diane Wang who is the Founder, Chairperson and CEO of DHgate at the APEC ministerial meeting in Bali. The CBET's main goal is to introduce the booming cross-border e-commerce to MSMEs around the world through training, enabling them to integrate into the global industrial chain, lift out of poverty, start up and upgrade via cross-border e-commerce. At present, the project is quite far-reaching, which has trained more than 10,000 entrepreneurs, business association representatives and policymakers from more than 20 economies.