BRI, developing markets better tapped by surging cross-border transactions

In Africa, almost every fishing company is familiar with a particular "fishing king" from China, whose English name is Bill. Jiang Song, general manager of Wuhan Jianuo Industrial Co Ltd, has been specializing in the export of fishing net products used by anglers across the continent.

Jiang's family has been involved in the fishing net business for more than 30 years. His father was engaged in trade in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, many moons ago, and Jiang took over the job about 15 years ago and has since begun to expand into overseas markets.

"When I first came to Nigeria in 2011, I found prime angling areas in West Africa to be particularly large, but the fishing methods of local fishermen were still relatively primitive. They usually plunged into the water directly to catch fish with their hands or use hand-woven fishing nets," Jiang said. After visiting some local dealers, Jiang deemed that the fishing nets, which serve as a necessity for local fishermen, would enjoy huge market potential in West Africa.

He initially sold fishing nets overseas through middlemen in South Korea, and now he is riding the cross-border e-commerce wave to sell fishing nets directly to emerging markets such as West Africa and Central America.

In his eyes, channels for traditional Chinese foreign trade enterprises to obtain customers have changed in recent years, as digitalization has become a necessary option for small and medium-sized companies to reach more global shoppers and rev up sales.

"We usually obtained new clients through the Canton Fair and other exhibitions, or directly paid visits to overseas customers to launch promotional campaigns locally," Jiang said, while emphasizing that the fast-developing cross-border online marketplaces have opened up a new gateway to secure orders and boost business abroad.

At the end of 2021, Jiang registered with Alibaba.com — Chinese tech heavyweight Alibaba Group's online business-to-business marketplace for global wholesalers — to develop digital foreign trade.

His company's annual sales reached 15 million yuan ($2.1 million) within just two years. Jiang's firm has also made forays into Europe, the Middle East, Central America and Southeast Asia. Apart from traditional fishing net products, Jiang has expanded new categories such as fishing gear and fishing rods through the digitalized tools provided by Alibaba.com.

"At present, sales of these new products account for more than 30 percent of my company's total exports," Jiang said, adding that he wants to cultivate more distributors and regional agents in emerging markets via digital trade platforms, and expand the number of big clients to 50.

Jiang is among a large number of entrepreneurs who are capitalizing on the cross-border e-commerce sector to expand their footprint in emerging markets. Experts said digital trade is a new engine for China's efforts to build itself into an even more formidable trading nation, while cross-border e-commerce has played a vital role in stabilizing China's foreign trade amid downward economic pressure and external uncertainties.

China's cross-border e-commerce industry has seen robust growth in recent years, with the sector's import and export scale reaching 2.38 trillion yuan in 2023, up 15.6 percent year-on-year, the General Administration of Customs said. E-commerce exports stood at 1.83 trillion yuan, up nearly 19.6 percent on a yearly basis.