2025 China (Guangzhou) Cross-border E-commerce Fair: Chinese e-commerce Drives Global Trade Development

China (Guangzhou) Cross-border E-commerce Fair is held at the China Import and Export Fair Complex in Guangzhou, China from August 15 to 17. Nearly 500 people, including business officials from Australia, South Korea, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and 21 cities in Guangdong Province of China, representatives of global cross-border e-commerce enterprises and industry experts and scholars, attended the event. With the reconfiguration of the global economy and trade, China’s cross-border e-commerce has become a key force driving the innovative development of international trade.

This year’s e-commerce fair, with the theme of “New Driving Forces for Foreign Trade, Digital Future”, has surpassed previous editions in terms of exhibition scale, platform engagement, industrial belt quality and professional forum level. With an exhibition area of over 40,000 square meters, it attracted more than 1,000 high-quality supply chain enterprises from around the world, 42 cross-border e-commerce platforms and nearly 200 ecosystem service exhibitors, forming a powerful lineup covering both mainstream and emerging markets globally.

This year’s exhibition innovatively set up thematic zones to safeguard the high-quality development of enterprises with “cross-border e-commerce AI, overseas social media, compliant overseas”, directly addressing the cutting-edge developments and core concerns of the industry. It is reported that the cross-border e-commerce AI zone brings together the world’s best AI technology service providers, covering key areas such as process automation, consumer insights, intelligent website building and operation, and intelligent customer service, providing sellers with cutting-edge tools to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. The overseas social media zone features official teams from global mainstream social media platforms such as TikTokshop, Kwai, and YouTube. In addition, the compliance overseas theme zone systematically organizes the comprehensive service base for Chinese enterprises’ going global, Qianhai Overseas e-Station, and several professional service institutions such as legal, testing and certification, aiming to enhance the risk prevention capabilities of Chinese enterprises’ going global.

To build a global e-commerce ecosystem, the exhibition also optimizes the emerging market platform zone, with international platforms such as Daraz from South Asia, Otto from Germany, Rakuten from France, Onbuy from the UK, Bol from the Netherlands, and Worten from Portugal participating for the first time. China, as a leading platform, also participated in the event with an extremely high standard. Among them, Temu, an e-commerce platform from China, has a booth area of over 500 square meters, presenting its “best value for money” supply chain advantage and global market layout through an immersive exhibition area. Shein, also from China, has a 180-square-meter booth, doubling from the previous year. It highlights its flexible supply chain system and the achievements of its fast fashion brand going global, becoming the core traffic focus of the exhibition.

At present, China is steadily advancing high-level opening up, and its domestic e-commerce platforms are linking the world and actively expanding cross-border e-commerce cooperation with countries around the world. On the basis of attracting mainstream e-commerce platforms in Europe and the United States, this year’s exhibition will enhance communication with cross-border e-commerce platforms in emerging markets in Southeast Asia and Latin America, learn from each other’s strengths, draw on the experience of e-commerce in Europe and the United States, exchange China’s excellent e-commerce platforms, drive new changes in global trade, continuously activate regional trade vitality, and make cross-border e-commerce a close link to the global market.

According to data from China’s General Administration of Customs, China’s e-commerce industry will achieve remarkable results in 2025. From January to June, online retail sales in China rose by 8.5 percent, while consumption of quality goods, trade-in and online services increased by 9.9 percent, 12.7 percent and 14.6 percent respectively. China’s cross-border e-commerce imports and exports reached 1.32 trillion yuan, up 5.7% year-on-year. There are more than 120 national stores both online and offline, 65 direct sourcing bases in 19 countries around the world, and more than 2,500 overseas warehouses.

The successful hosting of the 2025 China (Guangzhou) Cross-border E-commerce Fair not only provided a high-quality platform for global cross-border e-commerce enterprises to exchange and cooperate, and achieve mutual benefit and win-win results, but also an important driver for the transformation from traditional trade to digital trade, reconfiguring the global trade pattern with digital and intelligent means and promoting the development of global trade.