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Since the One Belt, One Road (BR) initiative was first proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, this ambitious foreign and economic policy framework has become a significant ideological objective of the Chinese Government. Following its initial introduction, a more formal proposal document was released which outlined in greater detail the specific objectives of the plan. The BR gets its name from the original Silk Road which was opened by Emperor Wu during the Western Han Dynasty in an effort to send Zhang Qian, a leading government official, and diplomat at the time, out into the Western Regions of the empire (Hu et al., 2014). However, in its modern day context, the BR initiative encapsulates both the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road and the Silk Road Economic Belt. In an effort to promote a new generation of internationalization and economic globalization, the initiative has seen China’s total trade with BR countries reach 9.27 trillion (yuan) in 2019, which an annual growth rate is 10.8%; an amount significantly higher than China's overall foreign trade growth rate of 3.4%1.
Cross-border e-commerce (CBE) is a new form of international trade. It has been instrumental in not only increasing global competitiveness but also in helping to provide the retail industry with modern, global, virtual features. As part of international developments, CBE has emerged as a means of driving further growth and internationalization across the region. (Qi et al., 2018; Mou et al., 2020). According to trends highlighted in Media Research2, the scale of global business to consumer CBE transactions value exceeded 650 billion US dollars in 2018, representing a 27.5% increase from the previous year. China and the US are the most popular cross-border destinations for global shoppers, while western European markets are the next most popular market along with Japan. From a global marketplace perspective, 26% of online shoppers have bought merchandise from China, while the US and UK are placed second and third in the world with 21% and 14% of sales respectively. As the leading global player, China has seen year-on-year growth of 20% in CBE transactions since 2008, with the total volume of transactions reaching 8.2 trillion yuan in 20173. As the marketplace has grown, further E-commerce platforms have been developed. For example, Aliexpress, the most popular online retail platform in China, has almost 500 million registered users, with more than 60 million people visit the Aliexpress website every day, purchasing over 48,000 items every minute (Chen, 2017).
CBE is an important means from which China is able to drive new economic growth opportunities with BR countries. As of April 2017, products from China's E-commerce marketplace were sold to BR countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Thailand, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Of these products, mobile phones, computers, and network products, electronic accessories, and household items are the most popular. At the same time, more than 50 BR countries have exported products to China through e-commerce sales activities. Among the goods imported by China from BR countries are, food items, alcoholic beverages, home textiles, fruits, watches and clocks, and seafood have proven to be the most popular4.