China’s fast fashion, globally popular shopping apps prove boon to Shenzhen’s e-commerce sector
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Buoyed by China’s rapidly growing cross-border e-commerce, the southern manufacturing hub and port city of Shenzhen is showing signs of overtaking Shanghai as the nation’s leader in foreign trade for the first time since 2015.
Customs data shows that the value of Shenzhen’s total imports and exports in the first four months of 2024 hit 1.41 trillion yuan (US$194 billion) – up 31.8 per cent from the same period last year and surpassing Shanghai’s 1.39 trillion yuan, which saw little change.
But for now, e-commerce businesses are cashing in on overseas demand. In the first quarter, the value of such trade in Shenzhen exceeded 110 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 95 per cent. That total represented half of Guangdong province’s, and about one-fifth of the nation’s, for the period, according to a report last month by state broadcaster CCTV.
The massive increase in such sales continued a trend from 2023, when Shenzhen’s cross-border e-commerce reached 326.53 billion yuan for the whole year – up 74.4 per cent over 2022.
“Shenzhen has seized opportunities in the updated global industrial division of labour, and it has aligned its industrial structure more closely with the demands of the world market,” said Peng Peng, executive chairman of the Guangdong Society of Reform.