The core of new measures for cross-border e-commerce to shift towards high-quality development is to promote the industry from scale expansion to quality improvement through policy guidance, logistics optimization, compliance escort and technological empowerment.
With the implementation of key policies such as the nationwide promotion of returns across customs areas from April 1, 2026, a series of pragmatic changes are reshaping the industry ecology.
The most direct change comes from the “loosening” of the logistics link.
In the past, returns were the most troublesome problem for cross-border e-commerce, but now there is a new solution.
Starting from April 1, 2026, cross-border e-commerce retail export goods can be returned at any customs port across the country and no longer have to be returned to the original place of export.
This new cross-customs return policy, combined with the preferential tax policy for export returns, is expected to shorten the return cycle by nearly half, saving an average of about 10 yuan in logistics costs per order.
This not only revitalizes the company’s overseas inventory, but also significantly improves consumers’ after-sales experience.
On the front end of customs clearance, the customs supervision model is also continuing to innovate.
For example, Manzhouli Airport Customs launched “embedded supervision” for cross-border e-commerce business with Russia, embedding the inspection link into the cargo switching process to achieve “one-stop” processing, which shortened the overall logistics time by about 36 hours.
These micro-level efficiency improvements jointly support the macro policy blueprint.
The “Guidance Opinions” recently issued by six departments including the Ministry of Commerce clearly stated that it is necessary to develop integration models such as ‘market procurement + cross-border e-commerce’ and ‘China-Europe trains + cross-border e-commerce’, and to vigorously support the construction of overseas warehouses for cross-border e-commerce.
This means that policies are shifting from single-link optimization to full-chain support, aiming to build a more efficient and diversified cross-border logistics system.
When logistics becomes smoother, compliance and risk, another major challenge for companies “going global”, also usher in systematic solutions.
At the policy level, for the first time, it was clearly proposed to “formulate guidelines for e-commerce companies to go overseas” and support local governments in building compliant overseas service platforms.
In practice, a nationwide intellectual property protection network is being formed.
Wuhan’s Intellectual Property Protection Center has established a rapid response mechanism of “24-hour early warning, 48-hour guidance, and 72-hour feedback” to help companies deal with overseas disputes.
Shandong provides subsidies of up to 600,000 yuan to high-value patent disputes that successfully defend overseas rights.
Yiwu’s Intellectual Property Rights Protection Center has saved companies more than US$400,000 in economic losses.
These measures have built a solid “security shield” for enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises.
At the same time, technology has become the core engine driving high-quality development.
Artificial intelligence and big data are being deeply integrated into the entire operation chain.
Jihong Co., Ltd. uses AI algorithms to analyze overseas markets, draw user portraits, and achieve precise marketing of “finding products for people”. Its cross-border social e-commerce business will see a year-on-year net profit increase of 86.81% in 2025.
The third-party intelligent solution can compress the traditional 15-day product selection cycle to 3 days, increase the return on advertising investment by 30%, and achieve an inventory forecast accuracy of 85%.
Technology not only improves the efficiency of giant companies, but also lowers the threshold for entrepreneurship.
There is an entrepreneurial team that uses AI tools to complete the entire process of product selection, customer service, and shelving. It only takes three people to manage 14 stores and tens of thousands of product inventories.
The precise cultivation of talents is also being followed up.
For example, Yunnan has included the cultivation of cross-border e-commerce talents into a special policy for the first time and subsidized relevant training costs; Jiangxi’s Vocational College of Foreign Languages and Foreign Trade has jointly built an industrial college with enterprises to explore order-based talent training.
These initiatives aim to consolidate the talent base for the sustainable development of the industry.
From simplified returns to smart risk control, a series of new initiatives are making the ship of cross-border e-commerce sail more steadily and faster.
