Recently, “Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership” (RCEP) was officially signed. As an RCEP covering 15 countries, a population of 2.3 billion, and a GDP of over US$25 trillion, what impact will it have on the cross-border e-commerce industry?

The twelfth chapter of RCEP specifically lists the specific terms of “e-commerce” specifically for e-commerce. The RCEP e-commerce chapter is the first comprehensive and high-level multilateral e-commerce rule reached in the Asia-Pacific region. It covers a wealth of related content to promote the use and cooperation of e-commerce, mainly including the promotion of paperless trade, the promotion of electronic authentication and electronic signatures, the protection of personal information of e-commerce users, the protection of online consumer rights, and the strengthening of electronic information for uninvited businesses Regulatory cooperation and other rules.

In addition, the parties also reached important consensus on issues such as cross-border information transmission and information storage in the agreement. These contents will provide institutional guarantees for member states to strengthen cooperation in the field of e-commerce, and will help create a good environment for e-commerce development. It enhances mutual policy trust, mutual recognition of regulations and enterprise interoperability in the e-commerce field of member states, and will greatly promote the development of e-commerce in the region.

The signing of RCEP will bring the following two benefits to cross-border e-commerce

1, trade facilitation.

Cross-border e-commerce operations involve the policies and business environment of each country, and different national conditions will bring corresponding risks. The signing of RCEP will bring greater convenience to mutual trade between countries in the region and reduce the uncertainty of business operations.

2, scale development.

The agreement clearly stipulates to promote the development of cross-border e-commerce. This shows that the development of cross-border e-commerce has become the consensus of all parties. The development model and regulatory measures of China’s cross-border e-commerce may be promoted and copied to more countries in the agreement area in the future, which will benefit China’s cross-border e-commerce on a large-scale development.

RCEP is a new type of free trade agreement with greater inclusiveness. The agreement not only covers issues such as trade in goods, dispute settlement, service trade, and investment, but also involves new issues such as intellectual property, digital trade, finance, e-commerce, and telecommunications. The signing of RCEP will bring huge opportunities to the cross-border e-commerce industry.

Currently, cross-border e-commerce is developing rapidly in China. The development of cross-border e-commerce in 2020 emphasizes branding and localization outside China, which require a large amount of overseas capital investment by cross-border e-commerce companies, such as overseas warehousing. After the RCEP regional rules are unified, for investors in the region, entering a country is equivalent to entering all the countries in the region, and such investment efficiency is higher and more stable.

The signing of RCEP helps to reduce the transaction cost of imported goods by a large margin, especially for cross-border e-commerce import companies, allowing customers to buy cheap and good quality overseas goods, especially products in the region. This will further promote the development of the cross-border e-commerce import industry.