As a new foreign trade infrastructure that supports the development of cross-border e-commerce, overseas warehouses are an important part of China’s new foreign trade formats and new models. They are also a key starting point to cope with the restructuring of the global economic and trade pattern and enhance the resilience of foreign trade.
In recent years, under the background of the continuous release of policy dividends and the active layout of enterprises, overseas warehouses have achieved rapid development, leading my country’s new foreign trade formats to accelerate the transformation and upgrading, effectively hedging external risk impacts, and have become a new engine to promote the high-quality development of foreign trade.
Under the dual role of policy empowerment and market drive, my country’s cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouses have achieved rapid expansion in scale and continuous optimization of layout, becoming a new engine for the high-quality development of foreign trade, with remarkable results and a stable momentum.
First, the scale has grown steadily and the global layout has continued to improve.
Up to now, my country has more than 1,800 overseas warehouses dedicated to serving cross-border e-commerce, with a total area of more than 22 million square meters. They are widely distributed in the United States, Germany, Vietnam, Thailand and other countries and regions, building a global warehousing network.
Faced with the tightening of “small exemption” policies in many countries, overseas warehouses have accelerated their diversified layout, and emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Russia have become the core of growth.
In 2025, the area of overseas warehouses in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa will continue to increase. The total area in Southeast Asia exceeds 2 million square meters, and the size of a single warehouse is comparable to Europe. At the same time, it will cooperate with overseas parks such as Thailand-China Rayong Industrial Park to create a “warehousing + industry” integrated system to improve the synergy efficiency of the industrial chain.
Second, momentum continues to be released, and the supporting role of foreign trade is highlighted.
Cross-border e-commerce is the growth point of foreign trade. From 2020 to 2025, the import and export volume increased from 1.69 trillion yuan to 2.75 trillion yuan, with an average annual compound growth rate of more than 10%. The growth rate in 2025 is 0.8 percentage points higher than the national foreign trade.
Overseas warehouses are expanding simultaneously with the industry and entering the fast lane of development. The United States Joint Market Research Institute predicts that the compound annual growth rate of e-commerce warehousing will reach 18.4% in 2032, indicating a vast market space.
Third, the industry has made coordinated efforts and export vitality has continued to increase.
Relying on the advantages of advanced manufacturing, my country’s B2B cross-border e-commerce leads the international share, driving exports from overseas warehouses to accelerate.
For example, Shandong Province’s cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouse exports reached 5.59 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year surge of 10.1 times, becoming a benchmark for local foreign trade growth and fully demonstrating the key role of overseas warehouses in stabilizing foreign trade and expanding the market.
As a key hub for cross-border trade, overseas warehouses have continued to improve their service efficiency and played an important role from the three dimensions of cost, contract fulfillment and industrial collaboration.
In terms of cost reduction, companies can prepare goods in bulk to overseas warehouses through full container shipping, China-Europe trains, etc. Logistics costs are reduced by 60% – 80% compared with single-piece direct mail. They can also enjoy lower value-added tax rates in the destination country, reduce customs clearance delays, and effectively alleviate corporate cost pressures.
In terms of improving contract fulfillment capabilities, the combination of local warehousing and local fulfillment has compressed cross-border delivery time from 15-30 days to 1-3 days. Overseas warehouses of Cainiao, SF Express and other companies have achieved efficient contract fulfillment, significantly improving the shopping experience of overseas consumers and enhancing the market competitiveness of my country’s cross-border e-commerce.
In terms of service extension, overseas warehouses are upgrading from single warehousing to comprehensive services, integrating warehousing and distribution with various value-added services. China National Building Materials’ Dubai overseas warehouse has become a regional distribution and trading center for new energy vehicles and other products, promoting collaborative empowerment of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and helping my country’s advantageous industries go global.
The rapid development of overseas warehouses has injected strong momentum into my country’s foreign trade. However, in the face of the complex and severe international environment, its high-quality development still faces severe challenges.
First, the layout is unbalanced.
At present, overseas warehouse resources are mainly concentrated in mature markets in Europe and the United States. The coverage density in emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East is insufficient, and the network layout is scattered. It is difficult to effectively seize the growth opportunities in these regions and restricts market expansion space.
Second, financing problems are prominent.
The construction and operation of overseas warehouses involve heavy asset investment and occupy a large amount of funds. Enterprises generally face the problems of narrow financing channels and high financing costs. Among them, small and medium-sized business entities have weak financial strength and more significant capital turnover pressure, which restricts their large-scale development.
Third, compliance risks have intensified.
Policies such as tax collection and administration, customs supervision, and environmental protection standards vary greatly among countries. Frequent adjustments and stricter supervision not only continue to increase the operating costs of enterprises, but also make it more difficult to prevent and control corporate compliance risks, bringing uncertainty to the stable operation of overseas warehouses.
Faced with the multiple challenges mentioned above, it is urgent to promote the quality expansion, optimization and upgrading of overseas warehouses, activate new momentum for foreign trade development, and create new advantages in international competition.
Optimize global layout and expand into emerging markets.
Accelerate the deployment of overseas warehouses in emerging markets such as ASEAN, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa, deepen cooperation with local logistics companies, and strengthen the coverage of warehousing networks in key countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam.
Improve last-mile logistics services such as warehousing, sorting, and distribution to achieve local stocking and local delivery, reduce operating costs, and avoid tariff risks.
Strengthen the collaborative planning of overseas warehouses and overseas parks, enhance the correlation and market complementarity with the host country’s resource endowment, industrial structure, and economic characteristics, create unique development advantages, and avoid homogeneous competition.
Strengthen the analysis and assessment of external factors such as the host country’s macro environment, business environment, industry market, etc., and improve risk warning and prevention and control mechanisms to provide guarantee for the stable operation of overseas warehouses.
Strengthen financial support and solve financing problems.
Build a diversified financial service system covering the entire chain of operations, sales, and logistics, innovate special credit, supply chain finance, financial leasing and other products, improve the financing evaluation mechanism based on corporate order volume, contract performance timeliness and other operational data, and effectively alleviate corporate financial pressure.
Improve the facilitation level of RMB settlement for cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouses, and focus on supporting overseas warehouse companies in the joint construction of the “Belt and Road” countries.
Optimize financial services for the differentiated stocking needs of B2B merchants, small and medium-sized sellers and other warehouse users, strengthen collaboration with taxation, customs declaration and other departments, and effectively improve corporate capital turnover efficiency through the one-stop service of “tax refund + financing”.
Deepen the green integration of science and technology and promote transformation and upgrading.
Accelerate the digitalization and intelligent transformation of overseas warehouses, promote models such as big data intelligent warehousing and shared intelligent warehouses, encourage small and medium-sized enterprises to jointly build and share intelligent overseas warehouses, and effectively reduce technology and operating costs.
Promote the local adaptation of the warehousing management system, optimize multi-language operation functions and country-specific tax data interfaces, and improve the adaptability and stability of overseas warehouse operations.
Establish a special scientific research fund to support technology companies and overseas warehouse operators to jointly develop artificial intelligence inventory management systems, energy-saving warehousing facilities, recyclable packaging technology, etc. based on the characteristics of the regions where overseas warehouses are located, such as the hot and humid climate of Southeast Asia, European low-carbon standards, etc., and promote overseas warehouses to accelerate the transformation into efficient, intelligent, low-carbon and environmentally friendly.
