Currently, cross-border e-commerce has become an important engine driving the growth of China’s foreign trade.
Recently, Ningbo Customs launched 12 measures to promote cross-border e-commerce exports in 2026 (hereinafter referred to as the measures), focusing on five major dimensions: speeding up customs clearance, cultivating entities, expanding categories, improving supervision, and monitoring and research, to help Ningbo build a high-level international cross-border e-commerce hub city.
Improve logistics channels and solve the problem of returns.
Logistics is the “lifeline” of cross-border e-commerce.
The measures released this time start from the cross-border logistics chain, greatly improving the customs clearance time, allowing the products of Chinese cross-border e-commerce sellers to reach the doors of overseas consumers faster.
The measures clearly propose to strengthen the linkage with international air cargo hubs such as Ezhou and Jiaxing, expand cross-border e-commerce exports such as “air-to-air transfer” and “air-land combined transport” and other multimodal transport modes; support the development of “international road transport (TIR) + cross-border e-commerce” and “sea-rail combined transport + cross-border e-commerce” business; optimize customs transfer and docking, and improve the timeliness of cross-border e-commerce customs transfer.
“Ningbo Customs’ new ‘air-air combined transport’ policy has completely broken the route congestion that has troubled us for many years.” Xing Yutao, head of Ningbo SF Express Port, said that under this model, local cross-border goods can be transferred through integrated port supervision, without the need for secondary unpacking and customs declaration, and can be directly connected to intercontinental routes. Customs clearance time is expected to be shortened by 30%, comprehensive logistics costs will be reduced by 20%, and logistics stability and timeliness will be significantly improved.
At the same time, the measures also propose optimizing the cross-border e-commerce supervision model.
Support qualified enterprises to build cross-border e-commerce export pre-warehouses, replicate and promote the “inspect first and then ship” model; implement the cross-border e-commerce retail export (9610) single-order operation model, explore the “sea express + cross-border e-commerce 9610 export” pilot, and support cross-border small parcel exports.
“The split-order operation model solves the problems of difficult cross-border small package shipments and long order collection cycles. It means that scattered orders can be declared independently and shipped out quickly, and the inventory turnover efficiency is significantly improved, which is conducive to reducing our overseas costs and enhancing market competitiveness.” said the person in charge of a local cross-border e-commerce company in Ningbo.
While the logistics network continues to improve, the return problem that has caused the majority of cross-border e-commerce sellers to “have a headache” will usher in a smoother solution.
Measures are proposed to deepen the pilot for cross-customs return of cross-border e-commerce retail export (9610) commodities, promote cross-customs return business from Ningbo Airport Port to Ningbo International Mail Exchange Center; implement preferential tax policies for cross-border e-commerce export return goods, and support tax-free return of export goods that meet regulations.
Previously, return packages for cross-border e-commerce retail exports could only be shipped “where they go out, where they go in”, which was costly and took a long time.
Under the cross-customs return model, sellers can flexibly choose more logistics nodes to improve the timeliness of returns processing.
For Ningbo Port, this policy will also help cross-border export retail goods from other parts of the country to be collected and distributed in Ningbo, bringing business opportunities to the majority of logistics companies.
Strengthen collaboration between related companies and stimulate market vitality.
In order to promote the high-quality development of the cross-border e-commerce industry, Ningbo Customs has further extended supervision and services to corporate governance, deepened the collaborative co-governance of customs and enterprises, and jointly built a new ecology of compliance development.
On this basis, Ningbo Customs actively promotes the expansion and improvement of export categories, strives to carry out pilot exports of cosmetics and other inspection-related goods through bonded e-commerce (1210), and further enriches cross-border e-commerce export formats; continues to strengthen intellectual property protection, relies on the “Longteng” special action to severely crack down on infringement and illegal activities, and guides companies to cultivate independent brands.
Data show that in the first quarter of 2026, Ningbo Customs has uncovered 29 batches of cases of infringement of private independent intellectual property rights, and has detained more than 150,000 infringing goods.
The relevant person in charge of a private enterprise in Ningbo said: “In recent years, Ningbo Customs has helped us intercept infringing products many times. This kind of strong protection allows us to have no worries about innovative research and development, and can focus more on improving product competitiveness.”
At the same time, Ningbo Customs continues to promote enterprises
“Grade classification” management is based on enterprise credit management and implements differentiated supervision based on enterprise compliance level, credit status and on-site supervision; more facilitation measures are given to AEO enterprises (customs advanced certification enterprises), and high-risk enterprises are strengthened to review and inspect documents, so as to promote the orderly development of industry standards.
While continuing to release policy dividends, Ningbo Customs insists on paying equal attention to supervision and services, and further assists the compliance development of enterprises by promoting standardized declarations of export lists and improving the “simplified declaration” model; it strengthens the management of export control items, strengthens port territorial connectivity, and prevents the risk of illegal exports through cross-border e-commerce channels.
In addition, Ningbo Customs will also cooperate with the General Administration of Customs to participate in the revision of the World Customs Organization (WCO) “Cross-border E-commerce Framework Standards”; continue to strengthen the monitoring and analysis of cross-border e-commerce export operations to provide strong support for industrial development and macro-decision-making; conduct regular corporate compliance training to help companies accurately grasp overseas regulatory policies and technical standards, and continuously improve export compliance levels.
A series of reform measures have been implemented, injecting momentum into Ningbo’s construction of a high-energy, open and strong city.
The relevant person in charge of Ningbo Customs said that the next step will be to promote the implementation of 12 measures one by one, continue to track the effectiveness of policy implementation, dynamically solve the difficulties and difficulties in customs clearance for enterprises, and continue to stimulate new momentum for cross-border e-commerce foreign trade through institutional innovation.
