Since 2018, guided by President Xi Jinping’s Thought on Socialism with Chinese characteristics for a New Era, MOFCOM has fully implemented the spirit of the 19th CPC National Congress and the second and third plenary sessions of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party. Grasping the development trend of the digital economy, MOFCOM has adopted pragmatic and innovative measures to meet people’s needs for a good life and take it as our starting point and objective. New achievements have been made in promoting e-commerce and informatization work, and a new chapter has been written. From January to November 2018, the national online retail sales reached 8.07 trillion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 24.1%. Among them, the retail sales of physical goods network was 6.27 trillion yuan, with an increase of 25.4%, accounting for 18.2% of the total retail sales of consumer goods, and its contribution rate to total retail sales of social consumer goods reached 44.1%.
First, carry out groundbreaking legal system construction. E-commerce legislation has achieved new breakthroughs. MOFCOM actively participated in the legislative work of the E-commerce Law, listened to the opinions of all parties in the society, and put forward a number of opinions and suggestions. On August 31 this year, the E-commerce Law was officially introduced as the first comprehensive legislation in the field of e-commerce in the world, and promoted the development of China's e-commerce onto a new historical stage with clear powers and responsibilities and laws to abide by. New progress has been made in industry standards. The code for sharing the credit information of e-commerce enterprises was promoted to release, 6 standards were submitted for approval, and 4 criteria for project approval.
Second, create an inclusive development environment. By conducting forward-looking and basic research in depth, a new economic statistical indicator system for the business sector was proposed. With the in-depth integration online and offline, e-commerce has become the "catalyst" and "living force" of circulation modernization. The pilot project of collaborative development of e-commerce and logistics express has achieved remarkable results. 11 pilot cities broke through the institutional barriers of coordinated development, formed a total of 17 typical experiences in the five major systems, and promoted the Opinions on Promoting the Coordinated Development of E-commerce and Express Delivery issued by the General Office of the State Council. The establishment of e-commerce demonstration has led the development of new economic agglomeration. The radiation of the demonstration base has been continuously enhanced. 39,000 e-commerce companies have been settled in 100 demonstration bases, including 910,000 employees and more than 7,400 incubating enterprises. The mid-term evaluation of the 13th Five-Year Development Plan for e-commerce was solidly carried out, the top-level design of digital commerce was strengthened, and the commercial field was promoted towards digital, networked, intelligent and integrated development.
Third, we implemented strong supporting policies. In the section of rural e-commerce, the number of comprehensive demonstration counties of e-commerce entering into rural areas has reached 1,016, among which the number of national-level poverty-stricken counties was 737, taking up 88.6% of the total number of poverty-stricken counties. The Ministry of Commerce guided and established the China E-commerce Alliance for Poverty Alleviation, organizing 29 electronic commerce and related service enterprises to help 487 enterprises from 351 poverty-stricken counties to have on-line sales. We chose 185 agricultural local products for major supports, strengthening supports, and subsidizing the enterprises to carry out the qualification work of “three qualities labels and one mark,” so as to enhance the level of branding and standardization. According to the monitoring of business big data, in January-November, the online retail sales of rural areas of the country reached 1.24 trillion yuan, up 31.0% year on year. The online retail sales of agricultural products of the whole country reached 201.35 billion yuan, up 33.6% year on year. In the section of cross-border e-commerce, we copied and popularized the management system of comprehensive demonstration areas which took “six systems and two platforms” as the core, to promote the transformation and upgrading of industrial parks and enterprises. In January-October, the total volume of import and export of cross-border e-commerce inspected and released by the customs reached 111.04 billion yuan, up 89.6% year on year.
Fourth, we conducted reciprocal and win-win international cooperation. We proactively expanded imports. At the first International import Expo, 88 e-commerce enterprises carried out in-depth cooperation with more than 200 international brands from more than 30 countries, becoming the major force of the purchasing team. We promoted the development of “Silk Road E-commerce.” At present, we have established e-commerce cooperation mechanism with 17 major countries, being the important achievements of the leaders’ visits and new highlights of bilateral economic and trade cooperation. We held roundtable meeting of governments and enterprises with countries like Brazil, and conducted policies coordination and projects matchmaking. We held training classes for “Belt and Road” cross-border e-commerce, laying foundation for building consensus, strengthening mutual trust and practical cooperation. We optimized international rule system. We contributed to the Initiative for E-commerce Cooperation of BRICS and the 16+1 E-commerce Development Initiative for Central and Eastern Europe. We completed the e-commerce negotiation of the FTA agreements including China-Singapore FTA, and actively promoted the e-commerce negotiations of more than ten of FTA agreements like Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, so as to construct a reciprocal and win-win e-commerce international rule system.
Fifth, we provided refined public services. We deeply promoted sharing of information resources. We conducted joint building and sharing of business big data with the first 12 provinces and municipalities, and compiled a series of monitoring analysis report monthly, quarterly and annually, so as to guide the healthy development of the industry. We compiled the Catalogue of Governmental Information Resource of the Ministry of Commerce, sharing the vertical management business and data information with 36 local commercial departments. We actively carried out “Internet + Governmental Services.” According to public demands, we optimized the system of governmental services and enhanced the level of standardization, networking and intelligence, so as to make enterprises and the public handle affairs more convenient, fast and efficient. We optimized the system of talents supporting services. We held e-commerce training class for the staff at the provincial, municipality and county level, and also trained prefecture-level governmental leaders under the entrustment of the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee. We also organized the training base for e-commerce professional and technical talents to train 50 thousand personnel cumulatively.
In 2019, we will take Xi Jinping’s Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as the guidance, completely implement the spirits of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and the second and third plenary sessions of the 19th CPC Central Committee. According to the deployment of the Central Economic Work Conference, we will accelerate the high quality development of e-commerce, further improve the actual effects of information construction, and endeavor to make new contributions to the construction of a strong country of economy and trade.
