In 2025, the gears of the technological Internet are turning faster than ever before.
On the eve of the technological reshuffle, no one dares to stop.
Major manufacturers are competing for computing power and large model applications, while e-commerce companies are reshaping their bottom line in the gap between supervision and compliance.
Making unmanned aerial vehicle sweeping robots, a group of companies rushing to make smart glasses, the entire hardware circle has fallen into a collective illusion of “omnipotence” and entrance anxiety.
As soon as the humanoid robot staggered out of the laboratory and did some odd jobs in the workshop, a cruel price war ushered in; the short drama bid farewell to the extensive model of getting rich overnight, and the comic drama directly reduced the dimensionality to attack, and the leading content companies were both excited and uneasy.
This is no longer an era where you can get tens of millions of dollars in financing just by writing a PPT. Technology, commercialization scenarios and ecological advantages cannot be lost.
Survive, and survive hard-core, has become the consensus of the TMT industry in 2025.
In the spring of 2025, Jason, a veteran of cross-border e-commerce, decided to go out and lead a shipping team to visit local sellers in places such as Singapore and Malaysia, and became familiar with local warehouses in major Southeast Asian countries.
More than two months later, he rented an office building in the Financial District along the Singapore River and started working full-time on localization business.
Jason has been deeply involved in foreign trade for more than 20 years. At home, he knows which industry brings out good goods and which factory can deliver small orders quickly. Overseas, he can accurately connect these supply chain capabilities to local segmented needs.
In 2025, the cross-border e-commerce industry will no longer just link to low-priced Chinese products and sell them in large quantities.
Global buyers’ understanding of “cheap” is evolving, and they want “certainty of high cost performance.”
The previous era of relying on tax-free low-price packages, policy windows, and information gaps to make profits has passed. It has been replaced by compliance, localized asset-heavy games, and the reconstruction of productivity brought about by AI technology.
Compliance is no longer a multiple choice question.
Talking about the most intuitive change in the cross-border e-commerce industry, Jason believes that it is the comprehensive implementation of compliance.
The first is the “encirclement” of overseas policies.
Since February 2025, the United States has successively imposed tariffs and canceled small tax exemption policies; subsequently, the European market, which has the same consumption potential, is becoming a strategic highland for cross-border sellers to compete. The European Union has also announced that it will impose fixed tariffs on packages under 150 euros from July 2026.
Overseas tariffs and other policies have directly impacted cross-border e-commerce platforms such as AliExpress, SHEIN and Temu.
Merchants lamented that each tax bill made them bid farewell to the era of low-cost direct mail.
Zhu Keli, an economist and founding director of the Guoyan New Economic Research Institute, found in a survey that domestic and overseas rules are accelerating together.
Major markets such as Europe and the United States have successively tightened tax exemption quotas, strengthened product access, and strictly controlled taxation and intellectual property rights. At the same time, domestic arrangements for customs clearance, taxation, data security, and foreign exchange settlement have also been improved.
The past model of relying on gray arbitrage and low prices to drive volume is unsustainable, and compliance capabilities have changed from optional to the bottom line for the survival of cross-border merchants.
Jason said that in 2025, China will deepen tax compliance in the field of cross-border e-commerce, the industry will become more standardized, and there will be more “regular troops” like him.
Many foreign trade companies that rely on private transfers and paid exports have encountered an unprecedented survival crisis, while those foreign trade companies that have laid out compliance systems in advance have gained certainty in this turbulent year.
“This adjustment seems to tighten the space, but in fact it removes obstacles to long-term development and promotes the concentration of resources to entities with standardized operations and stable performance capabilities.” Zhu Keli believes that only after good money drives out bad money can China’s cross-border e-commerce win more resilient international credit.
The General Administration of Customs disclosed that China’s foreign trade import and export volume will reach 45.47 trillion yuan in 2025, an increase of 3.8%, and the scale of foreign trade will hit a record high.
China has also become a net exporter of industrial robots, and exports of green products such as new energy vehicles and wind turbines have increased by 27% and 49% respectively.
Localization has become the focus of competition.
In order to allow merchants to focus more on R&D, innovation and production, platforms such as Alibaba International Station, AliExpress, and Temu are all betting on a semi-managed model, with the platform taking over the most complex logistics fulfillment, local tax declarations, and after-sales services.
Zhang Kuo, President of Alibaba International Station, said that the platform connects with the tax systems of various countries through digital interfaces to help small and medium-sized enterprises realize automated tax filing and compliant foreign exchange settlement.
In addition to compliance protection, the platform also focuses on the certainty of local performance and has launched solutions such as semi-custodial and AI tools for merchants.
The drying up of traffic dividends is not just a plight of domestic e-commerce companies.
There is a consensus in the cross-border e-commerce industry: the most expensive traffic is in Google, and the cheapest traffic is in the reputation of local people.
If compliance is the barrier to entry, then localization is the focus of cross-border e-commerce merchants.
Jason understands that localization is a mountain that cross-border e-commerce players cannot climb alone. It relies heavily on the linkage between platforms and industries to “sink” people, goods, and markets into the soil of the target market.
Wang Jian, a professor at the School of International Economics and Trade at the University of International Business and Economics, also observed that the most significant trend in the cross-border e-commerce industry in 2025 is localization.
In his view, localization should not just be a simple translation of copywriting, but should be integrated into the local supply chain, industry chain and talent chain.
AI reconstructs productivity.
In addition to compliance and localization, Zhang Kuo emphasized the significance of AI as a new productivity tool.
Zhang Kuo has seen many merchants with an income of over 100 million who are technical secondary school students, sports students or veterans, and have no experience in multilingualism or foreign trade. AI helps such merchants quickly make up for their shortcomings in ability and amplify their business acumen.
In 2025, AI technology will no longer be an embellishment, and generative AI will deeply penetrate into the entire chain of category launch, marketing promotion, and compliance testing.
Veteran foreign traders like Jason no longer need to hire expensive small-language salespeople. AI Agent can already handle multi-lingual customer inquiries or compliance declarations without interruption.
There are also some industrial and trade merchants who use AI tools to connect with global buyers overnight.
AI’s reconstruction of productivity brings not only efficiency improvements to the cross-border e-commerce industry, but also the ability of small and medium-sized enterprises to use digital tools to eliminate the cognitive gap of going overseas.
Zhu Keli pointed out that China’s cross-border e-commerce industry will still face many challenges in 2026, including increased external uncertainty and the weak ability of small and medium-sized entities to resist risks, but the long-term positive fundamentals will not change.
