On April 24, the “Industrial and Trade Integration·Intelligent Global Connectivity” Shenzhen Longgang District Cross-border E-commerce Conference was held grandly.
The latest set of data released at the meeting is exciting: in the first quarter of 2026, the total import and export volume of cross-border e-commerce in Longgang District increased by 252% year-on-year.
The Longgang Cross-border E-commerce Development Index released at the same time showed that Longgang gathered 11.7% of the country’s cross-border sellers and contributed 27.5% of the country’s order volume.
This means that one out of every four cross-border e-commerce orders nationwide comes from Longgang.
In recent years, Longgang has adhered to the concept of “not only making good things but also selling good things”, and has regarded cross-border e-commerce as an important starting point to promote the integration of industry and trade.
“China’s cross-border e-commerce should look to Shenzhen, and Shenzhen’s cross-border e-commerce should look to Longgang” has become an industry consensus. The influence of “the first cross-border e-commerce area” continues to rise, injecting strong momentum into the high-quality development of Longgang’s economy.
At the conference, the Longgang Cross-border E-commerce Development Index was unveiled. This is the first cross-border e-commerce development index in the country. It provides strong data support for the government to formulate industry policies, enterprises to layout cross-border business, and industry organizations to study and judge development trends. It also provides clear regional development guidance for sellers.
The index uses 2025 as the base period of 100 points and will increase to 137 points in the first quarter of 2026. There has been a significant improvement in terms of transaction scale, corporate development, and ecological support.
He Wei, publisher of the index and founder of Xiaguangshe, commented: “This means that Longgang cross-border e-commerce is entering a new stage of high-quality development featuring compliance improvement, innovation drive, and ecological synergy.”
It is worth noting that the index samples focus on small and medium-sized sellers with an annual merchandise transaction volume of less than 1 billion yuan, aiming to show the true state of the industry’s fundamentals.
Data shows that from 2024 to 2025, 94.3% of the top sellers in Longgang will be retained, 59.4% of the long-tail sellers will be promoted to the waist level and above, and 19.8% of the waist companies will be promoted to the top.
The echelon structure presents a “pyramid” pattern in which “the head is stable, the waist rises quickly, and the long tail grows strong”.
Behind this pattern is Longgang’s good infrastructure and service capabilities.
In core areas such as Bantian and Pinghu, “buildings are industrial belts” and “up and downstairs are upstream and downstream”, which allows sellers to have stronger risk resistance and smoother growth channels.
The cross-border e-commerce logistics network covers the whole area and efficiently adapts to all entities, effectively improving the acceleration of global contract fulfillment of enterprises.
Why has Longgang become the “first district for cross-border e-commerce”?
The answer lies in three core strengths.
Longgang has complete cross-border e-commerce infrastructure and a high concentration of talents. It has 1 cross-border e-commerce operation center, 2 technology and trade evaluation bases, 3 national e-commerce demonstration bases and 17 provincial-level public overseas warehouses.
More than 30,000 cross-border e-commerce companies and more than 300,000 employees form a huge industrial team. The number of merchants leads the way on platforms such as Alibaba International Station and Amazon.
Secondly, Longgang has a rich industrial belt and a profound manufacturing background. It has ranked first among the top 100 industrial districts in the country for eight consecutive years, and its manufacturing and processing capabilities cover 133 industrial categories such as 3C digital and clothing.
The glasses industry accounts for 1/4 of Shenzhen, printing, watches, gold and jewelry and other industries account for nearly 1/3 of Shenzhen. Products such as service robots, smart watches, televisions, and lithium-ion batteries are well-known throughout the country.
In Longgang, cross-border e-commerce sellers can complete the supply chain connection from research and development, sampling to mass production without leaving the area, effectively reducing procurement costs and improving product competitiveness.
Currently, the AI wave is sweeping across and reshaping thousands of industries.
In 2025, Longgang launched the “All in AI” strategy, fully promoted the industrialization of AI and industrial AI, and was at the forefront of the country in technology empowering cross-border e-commerce.
The recently planned “Global Intelligent Hardware Valley” can achieve “one concept in, one product out.”
Today, AI technology has been upgraded to the decision-making center of Longgang’s cross-border e-commerce industry, covering the entire process of product selection, marketing, inventory, and customer service. AI product selection can accurately predict market demand, greatly improve the success rate of hot product prediction, and shorten the new product cycle.
The technological gap is becoming a watershed in sellers’ core competitiveness.
Representatives of participating companies said that Longgang, as a cross-border e-commerce gathering place, has a complete supply chain and a booming industry, which makes companies more confident in taking root in Longgang.
Standing at a new starting point, Longgang promotes the sustainable development of the cross-border e-commerce industry with clear future plans.
At the conference site, the Longgang cross-border e-commerce high-quality development work team was inaugurated and the “Three-year Action Plan for the High-Quality Development of Cross-border E-commerce “Industrial and Trade Integration·Intelligent Globalization” (2026-2028)” was simultaneously released.
The plan clearly states that by 2028, the total cross-border e-commerce import and export volume will exceed 100 billion yuan, the overseas warehouse area will exceed 6 million square meters, at least 20 digital transformation benchmark companies will be cultivated, 5 platform companies will be attracted and cultivated, and more than 3 companies will be listed on the market.
“The special class will coordinate the coordinated efforts of more than 20 units to solve the two major pain points of cross-border e-commerce companies that they are afraid to go to the government and don’t know how to go to the government, and get through the ‘last mile’ of policy implementation.” said the relevant person in charge of the Longgang District Commerce Bureau.
At the same time, Longgang will launch two major plans open to the whole country.
The first is the “strictly selected factories” plan.
Longgang will cooperate with high-quality white-label factories and county and town enterprises in specialty industries that are willing but not yet able to go overseas, support enterprises in setting up R&D and design headquarters and international sales headquarters, build a production-sales docking bridge of “strictly selected factories + multinational headquarters + global markets”, and promote white-label factories to accelerate their transformation and development into international and brand-oriented enterprises.
The other is the “National Cross-border E-commerce Partner Recruitment Plan”.
Longgang will sincerely invite like-minded cross-border e-commerce companies and talents across the country to use overseas as the outlet, AI as the two wings, and Longgang as the springboard. By leveraging Longgang’s industrial and AI advantages, it will build a technology-based enterprise with both cross-border e-commerce and intelligent manufacturing attributes.
Yu Xiquan, Secretary of the Longgang District Party Committee, said that Longgang will continue to optimize the cross-border e-commerce development environment, improve the policy support system, accelerate the construction of a complete cross-border e-commerce industry chain and ecosystem, and strive to create a new highland for brand overseas based in Shenzhen, radiating across the country, and facing the world.
