On April 6, the Ministry of Commerce, together with six departments including the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, issued the “Guiding Opinions on Better Serving the Real Economy and Promoting the High-Quality Development of E-Commerce.” The policies issued this time cover the entire chain of logistics, compliance, branding, and talent, promote cross-border e-commerce from scale expansion to high-quality development, and help upgrade “Made in China” to “Chinese Brand.”
Germany is one of China’s most important trading partners in Europe. As Sino-German economic and trade cooperation continues to deepen, cross-border e-commerce is becoming a new engine for bilateral trade growth.
“China Foreign Trade” conducted an exclusive interview with Lin Wenkui, general manager of eBay’s International Cross-Border Trade Division in Greater China, to discuss the benefits, opportunities and challenges faced by Chinese companies in entering the German market.
As the fourth largest economy in the world, Germany has developed a mature and prosperous e-commerce ecosystem with its excellent network infrastructure, approximately 70 million Internet users and an online shopping penetration rate of over 80%.
The “eCommerce in Europe” report released by Statista shows that the European e-commerce market has a compound annual growth rate of 12%, with Germany continuing to lead the way.
Lin Wenkui said that Germany is one of eBay’s global core markets.
Since launching operations in Germany in 1999, eBay is one of the most commonly used online shopping platforms among German consumers.
According to eMarketer data in July 2025, the market’s compound annual growth rate from 2025 to 2029 is expected to be 8.29%, with strong long-term growth momentum.
At the same time, the Internet penetration rate in Germany is as high as 95%, and the e-commerce penetration rate has exceeded 66%, laying the foundation for the continued expansion of online consumption.
Overseas sellers contribute about 10% of Germany’s online sales. Among them, Chinese sellers have become the core force driving the growth of the German e-commerce market with their outstanding advantages in fashion, 3C, automobile and motorcycle parts and other categories.
“EBay Germany has become a partner for Chinese sellers to develop the market. As early as 2002, Chinese sellers noticed the business opportunities in the German market and used the eBay platform to get the first pot of gold in cross-border retail exports. In the following ten years, the number of Chinese sellers carrying out German export business on the eBay platform increased.
The volume increased by 30 times, but the sales increased by as much as 6,000 times.
” Lin Wenkui said that China is in a critical time window for the global diversification of cross-border e-commerce. As the North American market matures, Europe is becoming a new blue ocean for cross-border e-commerce and an important position for Chinese sellers to diversify the international market and achieve steady business growth.
eBay is also further increasing its investment in Chinese sellers’ expansion into the European market, especially Germany, and launching more targeted support policies.
Chinese companies facing many core benefits and structural opportunities in the German e-commerce market.
Judging from the eBay platform data, the unit price per customer in Germany is relatively high, and Chinese products with medium and high unit price are more likely to be recognized; as Germany is the core market of the EU, its localization capabilities can be replicated throughout the EU, and the marginal expansion cost is low.
Based on eBay platform data, 3C, home and gardening, automobile and motorcycle parts, and outdoor products are the most popular Chinese products among German consumers.
Household vacuum cleaners have always been star products, and sweepers have been the best-selling single product on eBay Germany during Black Friday for six consecutive years; Chinese sellers in the home and garden category sell one product every second, and gardening products sell one product every 30 seconds; the automobile and motorcycle accessories category has seen significant growth, with segmented products such as control arm ball joints, high-pressure fuel pumps, and spark plugs all achieving rapid growth in the first three quarters of 2025.
Among the fast-growing categories, 3D printing equipment, maternal and infant products and small household appliances have strong growth momentum.
Lin Wenkui revealed that in 2026, eBay will continue to promote the “Nuggets Europe” seller reward program to support Chinese sellers to steadily enter and expand the European market.
Since the launch of this policy in the third quarter of last year, it has attracted a large number of sellers to actively participate. With the support of platform incentives and policies, many sellers have quickly completed the layout and expansion of the European market, achieving a scale breakthrough from 0 to 1. Since then, a large number of high-quality sellers have successfully reached higher-stage growth targets in their European business.
Against the backdrop of high car ownership and stable after-sales demand in Europe, the long-term demand for auto and motorcycle parts is strong, creating new room for expansion for Chinese sellers.
Lin Wenkui mentioned that eBay ranks first in online auto parts sales in core European markets such as Germany and the United Kingdom.
At present, the European automotive after-sales market exceeds 180 billion euros and is growing steadily at an annual rate of 5%, while the e-commerce penetration rate is only 15%.
By 2027, the European automotive after-sales online market will exceed 30 billion euros.
The European Union passed new customs regulations on March 28, implementing more stringent regulatory measures on cross-border e-commerce platforms.
The implementation of this new regulation, combined with the strict German local standards, will make Chinese sellers face multiple challenges in compliance, logistics, and operations when going overseas.
“The overall standards of the German market are relatively high and have distinctive local consumption characteristics, which puts forward higher requirements for sellers’ local operation capabilities.” Lin Wenkui believes that although the German market has huge demand for Chinese products, due to many reasons, such as language barriers, strict retail standards, product certification and compliance requirements, Chinese sellers’ participation in the German market has greater room for improvement compared to English-speaking markets such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Challenges focus on language communication and localized operations, product compliance and certification requirements, and accurately grasping local consumer needs.
Lin Wenkui said that compliance is an important foundation for the sustainable development of cross-border business and the realization of long-term operations.
Compliance requirements in the German market cover multiple dimensions such as taxation, product safety and environmental protection, and are somewhat complex.
In view of the current compliance requirements in the German market, sellers need to pay special attention to three aspects: first, tax compliance, ensuring that the German VAT number and company information need to be fully matched with the platform registration information, reporting and paying VAT on time; second, product safety, for example, products must comply with CE certification standards, and prepare test documents and other materials in advance; and finally, environmental protection regulations, such as the Extended Production Responsibility Packaging Act, energy efficiency labels, etc.
Germany has a well-established domestic logistics system, and consumers have extremely high requirements for delivery timeliness, sales returns and exchanges, and logistics service experience. Cross-border logistics and overseas warehouse layout have therefore become a key capability fulcrum for sellers’ operations.
Facing this high-standard market, Chinese sellers are actively responding in terms of logistics performance: compliance costs have increased with the new VAT regulations, German packaging laws and the cancellation of the small package tax exemption threshold; German buyers’ general expectations for 1-2 day delivery and convenient returns have pushed sellers to continue to improve local service capabilities; customs clearance and DDP models require a careful balance between user experience and cost, etc.
The German market is the touchstone for China’s high-quality, branded, and digital transformation of foreign trade. Its high compliance standards and stringent consumer demands have forced Chinese companies to shift from “price competition” to “quality competition.”
Lin Wenkui said that eBay helps Chinese brands go global in four aspects: opening exclusive brand stores in Germany, providing customized decoration and traffic tilt; conducting local user research, adapting to German consumer culture, and guiding the telling of brand stories; relying on European site resources to achieve “German layout, multi-site operation” and reducing global expansion costs; sharing European consumption data and category trends, guiding brand product innovation and market positioning, and promoting the transformation of goods overseas to brand overseas.
“Bay is relying on the localization advantages of its German website to build a full-link support system from entry, operation, compliance, logistics, and marketing to help Chinese companies achieve standardized, stable, and sustainable global development.” Lin Wenkui said that eBay has long provided sellers with multi-faceted support at the compliance level.
The first is to provide real-time compliance dashboards for sellers, and provide account compliance physical examinations and standardized operation guidelines for sellers; the second is to provide data support, one-stop sales data download, and support the convenient sorting and extraction of declaration materials; the third is to provide compliance policy columns and online and offline seller training to interpret compliance points and share best practices.
In addition, eBay also links sellers with compliance service provider resources in various fields, and works with industry experts to provide sellers with professional support.
