The growth of e-commerce in Southeast Asia is not new, but the rapid expansion of the middle class and signals of consumption upgrading have brought a new turning point to the market.
In January this year, China’s General Administration of Customs announced that China’s exports to ASEAN would be 4.76 trillion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 14%; measured in US dollars, the total trade value between China and ASEAN exceeded the US$1 trillion mark for the first time.
Entering 2026, external demand will pick up, and exports to ASEAN will increase by 17.5% year-on-year in the first quarter.
According to statistics from third-party institutions, the GMV of Southeast Asian platform e-commerce will reach US$157.6 billion in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 22.8%, and an increase of nearly three times compared with 2020.
The annual GMV of TikTok Shop’s cross-border e-commerce in Southeast Asia has increased for many consecutive years, with a year-on-year growth of as high as 125% in 2025.
In this context, more and more merchants with domestic e-commerce background are setting their sights on the Southeast Asian market.
At the 2026 TikTok Shop Southeast Asia Cross-border E-commerce Annual Summit on May 22, the platform revealed this trend.
The platform also took advantage of the trend to lay out its plans for the second half of the year, announcing three core strategies and releasing a lightweight business strategy plan for cross-border merchants.
The rapid expansion of the middle class in Southeast Asia has attracted domestic trade merchants.
The per capita GDP of Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and other countries has been rising for many consecutive years.
Vietnam’s real GDP growth rate will exceed 8% in 2025, and the proportion of the middle class is expected to rise to 26% this year.
The stock of wealthy households in Thailand is close to 600,000, indicating an increase in categories symbolizing quality of life.
Malaysia’s emerging middle class has a strong demand for fully automatic cleaning tools.
These changes reflect the shopping tendency of Southeast Asian consumers towards quality, personalization and high customer orders.
In 2025, the GMV of multiple categories of the TikTok Shop Southeast Asia cross-border e-commerce platform will increase significantly. For example, the GMV of the massage device category will increase by more than 10 times year-on-year, and the unit price per customer will increase by 57% in 3 months.
The maturity of content e-commerce has provided support for consumption upgrades.
A 60-second grass-growing short video and a live broadcast can give high-quality and affordable products a chance.
The personalized recommendation mechanism of the TikTok platform can bring good supplies to users with consumption potential.
The demand gap for high-quality, personalized, and branded products is expanding, and Chinese domestic e-commerce merchants have become suppliers.
In the past year, 40% of the merchants on the TikTok Shop Southeast Asia cross-border e-commerce platform were merchants with domestic e-commerce background, and the average ordering cycle of new merchants was shortened by 15 days.
Shenzhen massage device brand ULucky is a typical representative.
It will start with domestic content e-commerce in 2023, and its domestic market share will reach 40% by the end of 2025.
Entering the Vietnamese market in 2026, by emphasizing the “emotional value” of the product, orders peaked at 1,000 orders on Valentine’s Day.
In the past two years, Southeast Asia content e-commerce has reached a new turning point, and its coverage will reach 85% of the overall e-commerce market in 2026.
TikTok Shop content market and shelf market are deeply integrated to create growth space for merchants.
At the 2026 TikTok Shop Southeast Asia Cross-border E-commerce Annual Summit, officials proposed three core strategic upgrades.
The first is to accelerate the expansion of Chinese brands overseas, open up categories with high customer order potential, and optimize the cold start incentive system for new brands; the second is to improve the efficiency of global operations and achieve “one backend, one inventory, and one set of content, sold in five countries”; the third is to continue to improve the platform’s full-link capabilities, optimize commodity governance rules, create a new cross-border fulfillment model, and improve after-sales policies and reverse links.
For Chinese overseas merchants, cross-border e-commerce in Southeast Asia is a market that is predictable, replicable, and deeply cultivated.
TikTok Shop Southeast Asia’s cross-border e-commerce 66 promotion is in full swing, and it is expected that more domestic trade merchants will achieve outstanding results.
Before the window narrows, whoever can use the methodology well will be more likely to turn the opportunity into a long-term business.
