Time of issuance: July 2015

Aligning with State Council's guideline on healthy and fast development of cross border e-commerce, issued in June 2015, the Shanghai municipal government put forward a set of proposals in a bid to improve administrative services and explore innovative approaches to further develop cross border e-commerce in all regions within its jurisdiction, in light of its own unique socioeconomic situations.

1. The guiding theory

Shanghai is taking on the initiative to build itself into a hub for global economy, and international finance, shipping and trade, complying with the State Council's guidelines issued in 2009. In the meantime it is also aiming to build itself into a technological innovation center, in line with the national strategy for innovation-driven development.

With these ambitious development plans being implemented, Shanghai looks to shape the e-commerce sector as a standardized industrial cluster, with deepened reforms being implemented in structure, management, and services, taking advantage of policy reforms taking place gradually inside the Shanghai free trade zone and the favorable geographical advantage of sitting at the estuary of one of the world's busiest inland rivers for freight traffic.

2. Overall objectives of Shanghai municipality's efforts to promote cross border e-commerce sector

1). To foster an industrial chain of e-commerce with self-sufficiency by maturing both third party platforms and self-support businesses, by welcoming the participation of both domestic and overseas businesses, by attaching equal importance to import and export and focusing on both online and offline practices.

2). To push for the innovation in policies drafting and supervision system to establish an efficient, convenient and safe management model for cross border e-commerce.

3). To accelerate the development of complementary industries to cross border e-commerce, and to allocate resources to create an ecosystem that is suitable for the cross border e-commerce sector to thrive.

4). To steadily increase the proportion of the turnover of cross border e-commerce in the total and promote the sector's development level to among the highest in the country by 2020.