On the first anniversary of the launch of the World Electronic Trade Platform (eWTP) in Yiwu, on June 18, 2020, Alibaba Group and the Yiwu Municipal Government joined forces again to announce the upgrading of cooperation between the two sides around eWTP to help recover global trade through digitalization.
Zhang Yong, chairman of the board of directors and CEO of Alibaba Group, said at the signing ceremony: “Yiwu is using the advantages of product concentration, customer concentration, and infrastructure accumulated in the past to formulate strategic plans for the new era. “Ali hopes to work with Yiwu to build a future-oriented digital small commodity city, a digital port, and jointly build digital global trade.”
Picture: Zhang Yong, Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Alibaba Group, delivered a speech at the signing ceremony of the Yiwu Joint Venture
On the same day, Alibaba Group and Yiwu China Commodity City Group signed a joint venture to build an eWTP Yiwu public service platform to provide digital infrastructure for local SMEs engaged in cross-border trade. At the same time, using digital technology to innovate management models, the Yiwu Comprehensive Free Trade Zone, which was approved to be established in March this year, has become the benchmark for the most digitized comprehensive insurance zone in China.
The joint venture's first innovative project is the cross-border imported goods exhibition zone, which will be put into trial operation in the Yiwu Comprehensive Insurance Zone on September 15. It uses Ali's technical capabilities to create a new retail model room for cross-border imports. After consumers have experienced products here, they can pay on the spot and pick up good products from around the world in seconds without having to wait for the package to complete customs clearance and delivery through online orders. The first trial operation area of the exhibition area is 20,000 square meters. After the model is mature, it will expand to within 300,000 square meters to form an outlet for imported products.
As the “small commodity capital of the world,” Yiwu has been famous for exports until now, and under the country's call to expand imports, Yiwu is also transforming into a distribution center for imported consumer goods. On the same day, Alibaba and the Yiwu Municipal Government also announced the launch of the eWTP Yiwu Digital Customs Clearance Port to help small and medium-sized overseas merchants importing goods in the form of packages to achieve digital customs clearance and customs clearance in seconds.
eWTP was initiated by Alibaba founder Jack Ma. It aims to incubate new global trade rules in the digital age through public-private dialogue, and jointly build digital business infrastructure to help global SMEs better participate in global trade. Currently, the governments of Hangzhou, Yiwu, Malaysia, Belgium, Rwanda, and Ethiopia have joined eWTP.
In the year eWTP landed in Yiwu, more and more Yiwu SMEs began to go overseas digitally. According to data from Alibaba's international website, the online transaction volume of merchants in Yiwu increased by 82% in one year, attracting nearly 3 million active buyers. At the same time, Yiwu enterprises are also joining hands with Alibaba to connect with eWTP digital trade hubs such as Belgium, Rwanda, and Ethiopia to participate in eWTP digital trade infrastructure construction and rule model innovation.
Zhang Yong said, “In the future, all elements of commerce will be fully digitized. From merchants and commodities to settlement and logistics, every container and every document will be digitized, and a digital trade world is being formed. Yiwu and Ali have common customers and a common market. Through institutional innovation, technological innovation, and trade innovation, we are doing our best to make customers and markets better and consumers' lives better.”
In response to export problems caused by the epidemic, on the same day, Alibaba also announced a series of measures to help small and medium-sized enterprises in Yiwu digitally export, including the establishment of Jiutong World Yiwu Company to help local manufacturers connect with the global market in one stop; Alibaba International Station also joined hands with Yiwu Chouzhou Bank to create an integrated digital foreign trade balance solution for local merchants to facilitate settlement procedures. The international website will host 20 online exhibitions this year, including hosting the world's first small goods online exhibition for Yiwu, in an effort to attract 5 million international wholesalers to Yiwu. Recently, Alibaba Online Fair, the world's largest digital exhibition in the field of cross-border trade, has opened.
