The iron pot on the stove was sizzling, and the display staff was cooking on the spot, and the hot steam was wrapped in the aroma.
On June 16, at the Wuxi International Convention Center, the 2026 Yangtze River Delta Cross-border E-commerce Fair was crowded with people. The booth of Jiangsu time-honored brand Wangyuan Jiyefang was crowded with merchants from all over the world.
Yuan Jin, assistant to the chairman of Wangyuan Jiyefang, said, “The quality of iron pans cannot be determined by pictures and parameters alone. The product value needs to be reflected through actual cooking and real kitchen scenes.” Wangyuan Jiyefang used AI data analysis to customize lightweight non-stick pans that meet the needs of induction cookers for overseas markets. More than ten Southeast Asian purchase intentions were reached at the exhibition site.
Understanding the real needs of overseas users for “physical non-stick, fast and uniform heat conduction”, an iron pot created a “new algorithm” for going overseas. This is a vivid epitome of Jiangsu’s traditional manufacturing embracing cross-border e-commerce.
In the first seven months of 2025, the province’s cross-border e-commerce imports and exports increased by 82.6%, and have continued to grow since this year, becoming the core engine driving the overall growth of foreign trade.
In May this year, Jiangsu released a three-year action plan to improve the quality and development of cross-border e-commerce. AI empowerment, bringing industries overseas, and expanding diversified markets have added new paths for the major manufacturing province to go overseas.
“The most powerful brain” enters the scene: AI reconstructs the “foreign trade script”
As the first cross-border e-commerce exhibition in the Yangtze River Delta focusing on artificial intelligence, 16 global leading platforms and more than 50 ecological service companies gathered on site.
In front of the cross-border artificial intelligence zone, the reporter saw that business leaders were lining up to experience it – AI product selection, AI content generation, AI advertising, AI digital human live broadcast… New application scenarios are “reconstructing” the way foreign trade is played.
“AI empowerment is an inevitable choice. Enterprises that do not use AI will be at a disadvantage in one-way and transparent competition, making it difficult to achieve efficient blockbuster sales.” said Du Guochen, director of the E-Commerce Research Institute of the Institute of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce.
“AI Michael”, a subsidiary of Nanjing Enterprise Focus Technology, has been upgraded to version 4.0. Operators only need to “feed” the AI a few keywords to automatically generate titles and copywriting that meet platform standards.
At present, this tool has served more than 6,000 foreign trade companies.
Lu Yi, Vice President of Focus Technology and General Manager of the AI Center, said that the system is continuing to optimize in an efficient and accurate direction: it automatically optimizes and adjusts products that have no effect for 90 days, and can learn from the communication and negotiation experience of the company’s gold medal foreign trade staff, while integrating industry analysis and internal company data to achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement.
To help the product selection process move from “intuition” to “data” – Amazon’s “Business Opportunity Detector” is equipped with AI technology and can analyze billions of customer interaction data.
Xiang Bowen, Jiangsu head of Amazon’s exclusive account manager team for global stores, gave an example: “Nowadays, competition in Jiangsu’s home textile market is fierce, with many competing for price and style. However, we found from the search side that many consumers have great demand for bamboo fiber and multi-piece sets of cotton and linen products, but it is difficult to find satisfactory products.
Products – This shows that there is still huge room for demand in subdivided categories, and AI can clearly identify new undiscovered blue oceans in the home textile industry.”
Sumeida Textile uses AI to design and sample clothing export products, and fabric export companies use AI to collect fabric export trends…
With the empowerment of AI, the inherent shortcomings of manufacturing enterprises – the lack of consumer data and digital operation capabilities, which leads to lagging brand and product iterations – will also be quickly made up for.
Government services and industry organizations also embrace AI: the Provincial Council for the Promotion of International Trade uses AI to handle document business, and the Licensing Center applies AI to automatic steel license processing.
From government affairs to industry, AI is penetrating the entire foreign trade link.
Global buyers “command” online, and smart production lines “receive orders in seconds”
“The ex-factory price of a manual hydraulic truck in Hebei’s industrial belt is only 600 to 700 yuan, but it sells for 600 to 700 US dollars on Amazon.” At the trade fair, this case was mentioned repeatedly – the price difference in the middle is exactly the profit margin left by cross-border e-commerce to manufacturing companies.
For Jiangsu, a province with the largest manufacturing added value in the country, this is a transformation path of great value.
Yang Jie, secretary-general of the Provincial E-Commerce Association, said that in the past, the outside world generally believed that the protagonist of cross-border overseas exports was consumer goods, but in fact, industrial products also need to use online methods such as videos and live broadcasts to enhance purchasers’ intuitive understanding of the products. “The new blue ocean of cross-border e-commerce is extending from C-end consumer goods to B-end procurement markets and industrial products. Electric machinery, telecommunications equipment
, office supplies and other categories have advantages in foreign trade, but online penetration is low and there is a huge market gap. As a major manufacturing province, Jiangsu has the unique advantage of exploring this blue ocean.
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In May of this year, Nanjing Changji Electric Power Technology Co., Ltd. relied on the cross-border e-commerce 9710 model to sell alternator equipment worth more than 4 million yuan to Türkiye.
“We use AI to generate practical operation videos of equipment, and add online 3D factory visits, so overseas buyers can complete preliminary factory inspections and parameter comparisons without flying to China.” General Manager Li Guangdong said that trust that used to be established “face to face” can now be achieved through a video link, and the 9710 customs clearance model has greatly simplified the process of exporting large-value equipment, making the way for industrial products to go overseas more smoothly.
The factory-to-consumer (DTC) model is significantly increasing profit margins.
In the intelligent production workshop of Changzhou Zhongtao Home Furnishings Co., Ltd., the sanding machine automatically switches sandpaper based on the 3D model, and the sales department staff communicate with buyers on the other side of the ocean in real time in various languages – what styles of height-adjustable tables and sideboards are directly customized.
“Buyers around the world ‘command’ the factory online to determine what style the user wants, and the smart production line can ‘take orders in seconds’ or even ‘open molds with one click.'” Chen Jialin, general manager of the company, said that in recent years the company has actively expanded its global business through cross-border e-commerce, and is currently stepping up its presence in the U.S. and South Korean markets.
Systematic operations: cross-border e-commerce has become a “new infrastructure”
From a single breakthrough to a systematic layout, Jiangsu’s cross-border e-commerce is entering a new stage of systematic development.
In May this year, five departments including the Provincial Department of Commerce jointly issued the “Jiangsu Province Cross-border E-commerce Quality Improvement Development Action Plan (2026-2028)”, which clarified that by 2028, the province will have built 200 cross-border e-commerce industrial parks and incubation bases, 60 cross-border e-commerce specialty industry belts, and focused on cultivating 200 public overseas warehouses to further increase its contribution to the province’s foreign trade.
“Cross-border e-commerce has risen from a mode of international trade transactions to an important international trade infrastructure.” said Ni Haiqing, deputy director of the Provincial Department of Commerce.
Currently, there are three opportunities arising from the transformation of global AI trade technology, the transformation of Chinese enterprises’ overseas business models, and the transformation of Jiangsu enterprises’ manufacturing methods. “The long-term ‘intelligent transformation’ promoted by Jiangsu manufacturing enterprises has achieved remarkable results, and its flexible manufacturing capabilities have been greatly improved, providing opportunities for the development of cross-border e-commerce.”
It provides a more solid industrial foundation and has broad prospects for traditional foreign trade and manufacturing enterprises to transform and go overseas.”
In the context of the profound restructuring of the international economic and trade pattern, cross-border e-commerce is becoming an important starting point for Jiangsu to take the initiative and dominance in foreign trade.
Zhen Liping, Director of the Foreign Trade Division of the Provincial Department of Commerce, said that the Provincial Department of Commerce is comprehensively promoting the improvement of the compliance level of foreign trade enterprises and implementing the new three-year action plan.
We will provide targeted training and guidance and increase support.
We will also make full use of professional service resources such as product certification and foreign-related legal services to solve pain points and promote the development of cross-border e-commerce.”
Cross-border opportunities have been turned into real negotiations and orders at the exhibition hall.
Overseas buyers from more than 30 countries, including the United Kingdom, India, and Iran, shuttled back and forth. Fattah Saif, a buyer from Yemen, went straight to the new energy vehicle exhibition area. He opened the door and got into the cab, holding the steering wheel to feel the view. He carefully looked at the interior and space. After a long time, he opened the door and got out of the car. “Chinese new energy vehicles have good performance and cost-effectiveness and are very popular in Yemen.” After the experience, he left his contact information and prepared for the next step.
An iron pot tries to “read” the data, a piece of home textile finds a “gap” in the market, and a generator can complete the inspection through the screen – cross-border e-commerce opens up a new channel of supply and demand, allowing Jiangsu manufacturing to change from “waiting for orders” to “looking at data” and moving from “world factory” to “global brand”.
This is not only an iteration of production methods, but also a deep test of business thinking, and this change has just begun.
