On March 12, the 2026 Shandong Cross-border E-commerce Development Conference was held grandly in Jinan.
Representatives from 18 internationally renowned e-commerce platforms, including Amazon, JD Joybuy, Walmart, and eBay, gathered at the event to share the platform’s latest policies, incentives, and operational experience.
As an emerging trade method in recent years, cross-border e-commerce has attracted much attention.
This year’s government work report proposed to promote the expansion and upgrading of the cross-border e-commerce plus overseas warehouse model, and standardize and orderly development.
How is cross-border e-commerce developing in Shandong?
How is the market?
Focusing on these issues, reporters conducted in-depth interviews.
At present, “If you don’t go overseas, you will be out” has become a general consensus among Chinese companies.
Not only are industry leaders accelerating their globalization layout, but many small and medium-sized enterprises are also making efforts to “sell their products overseas.” Cross-border e-commerce, as a novel and efficient way to go overseas, has become an important choice.
Chen Ying, senior manager of key customer development and operations at Amazon Europe, shared global data at the meeting: As of 2025, 52% of online shoppers around the world will actively search for and browse overseas products; in the next four years, the proportion of online shoppers in “Generation Z” (a generation born from 1995 to 2009) will rapidly rise to 90.3%, and the cross-border e-commerce market has huge potential.
Weihai Yunzhou Supply Chain Company mainly exports daily necessities to South Korea through cross-border e-commerce. Last year, the company shipped more than 8 million orders, an increase of more than 13%. It is expected to continue to maintain double-digit growth this year.
Kong Xiang, general manager of the company, said that with the improvement of China’s technological level, “Made in China” is called “the most cost-effective product” by consumers in the Korean market.
Take furniture as an example. Chinese furniture continues to be popular in the Korean market. The quality of many categories is better than local Korean products, but the price is two or three times lower, making it extremely competitive.
Kong Xiang believes that Shandong itself is a major manufacturing province, and coupled with its location adjacent to Japan and South Korea, it has unique advantages in developing cross-border e-commerce.
Data show that in 2025, Shandong’s total import and export value will increase by 4.5% year-on-year, of which the cross-border e-commerce B2B direct export value will increase by 7.6% year-on-year, and the growth rate is much higher than the province’s average trade level.
At the same time, last year, 22,000 companies in the province achieved new increases in exports through cross-border e-commerce, accounting for more than a quarter of the total number of foreign trade companies in the province with actual performance.
However, although cross-border e-commerce has great potential to go global, if you do not understand the “rules of the game” abroad and go overseas randomly, you will be out of the game.
Shandong High-tech Supply Chain Company is mainly engaged in cross-border e-commerce import and export business in the field of cosmetics. The company’s general manager Meng Qingfeng has been working hard in the field of cross-border e-commerce for 15 years.
He said that many companies suffered losses when they first went overseas because they were not familiar with the business.
For example, many companies have registered brands in China and want to export when they are well-known. However, because the trademark is registered by a foreign agency, they will be involved in disputes. They must either go to court to defend their rights, which costs a lot of time, or they must redeem the brand, which costs a lot of money and puts them in a dilemma.
In addition, cross-border e-commerce involves returns, and logistics costs are sometimes even more expensive than the goods. If you choose to discard, e-commerce platforms in some countries will also charge disposal fees, which requires companies to communicate in advance before going overseas.
At the same time, companies should also pay attention to the consumption characteristics of different countries when exporting through cross-border e-commerce.
Lv Yaping, secretary-general of the Shandong Provincial Cross-Border E-Commerce Association, said: “Judging from the current situation of the companies we have mapped, although cross-border e-commerce exports have great opportunities, there are also many risks, such as the reliability of logistics service providers, exchange rate changes, tariff adjustments, etc.
“We have to face it.”
The relevant person in charge of the Service and Trade Division of the Provincial Department of Commerce said that Shandong Province has currently established a unified cross-border e-commerce comprehensive marketing service platform to recommend and certify the warehousing and logistics required for enterprises to engage in cross-border e-commerce business, so as to ensure the safety of enterprises going overseas to the greatest extent.
In 2025, profound changes have taken place in the global cross-border e-commerce field.
The United States has canceled the tax exemption policy for small-value packages, which has increased the cost of cross-border e-commerce trade.
In the field of e-commerce platforms, platforms such as Amazon have announced greater efforts to “lower prices”, while platforms such as Temu and AliExpress have begun to pay more attention to high-quality supply chains and brand overseas.
These changes all point to a problem: Although cross-border e-commerce is still a blue ocean, the era of “covered development” has passed, and intensive cultivation is required to achieve longer-term development.
Kong Xiang understands this deeply.
He said that although the Korean market, where the company is mainly engaged, is currently very good, there are uncertainties in the tariff policy, and the brand power and premium ability of the products must be improved in order to improve the ability to resist risks.
When Meng Qingfeng was engaged in the import of cross-border e-commerce products, he also discovered that around 2010, Korean facial masks were very popular in the domestic market because of their high cost performance. However, the import volume has dropped significantly in recent years. On the contrary, brands such as La Mer have not been affected.
“This shows that brand competitiveness is very critical in future cross-border e-commerce.” Meng Qingfeng said.
In fact, Shandong’s cross-border e-commerce product exports are also undergoing structural transformation.
Ding Yang, chief of the Express Mail Supervision Section of the Qingdao Customs Port Supervision Office, analyzed that judging from the province’s cross-border e-commerce exports last year, the proportion of traditional labor-intensive products such as clothing, shoes and hats, and plastic products dropped by 6% to 10%. The export growth rate of high value-added products such as tablet computers, smart small appliances, mobile phone accessories, and data storage equipment exceeded 30%.
Wang Hong, deputy director of the Provincial Department of Commerce, said that this year Shandong Province will promote the implementation of the “five major actions” for the high-quality development of cross-border e-commerce. In terms of brand building, it will implement the “one store, one product” plan to support companies in brand certification and overseas marketing, and gradually get rid of the old path of OEM.
At the same time, we will focus on advantageous industries such as petroleum equipment and hardware and labor insurance, focus on cultivating 10 influential chain master platforms, and build a “chain master platform + industrial belt” model to drive the entire industry chain to go global.
“We will make every effort to promote the transformation of ‘Made in Shandong’ into ‘Shandong Brand’.” Wang Hong said.
