the chinese cross-border e-commerce sector has welcomed an influx of foreign live-streaming hosts to boost sales to international buyers.
infrastructure, the digitized economy and technology innovation in china have attracted international hosts like 23-year-old asilbek khonkhujaev from uzbekistan. khonkhujaev said live streaming gave him opportunities to find more suppliers, create better product understanding and build greater trust between sellers and entrepreneurs.
a growing number of overseas live streaming hosts have entered chinese cross-border e-commerce platforms over the past year.
overseas hosts have a natural advantage in that they know more about the foreign market and consumers, so they are able to solve problems from an international perspective, said gu xiang, manager of live streaming business at aliexpress.
the overseas market shows a lot of potential for chinese businesses, said xu kai, associate professor of the school of economics at zhejiang university. however, xu cautioned that chinese enterprises should consider challenges including language, religion and culture taboos when expanding to the international market.
there are content and delivery regulations for china's live streaming industry. the problem is that these were not written for foreign-language content.
domestic platforms usually use chinese to detect live streaming content with algorithms and technologies that are not designed for use with english, said cui lili, executive director of the institute of e-commerce at the shanghai university of finance and economics.
some domestic platforms even banned overseas hosts in an attempt to curb potential risks. cui suggested that cross-border e-commerce platforms should improve their algorithms and technologies for english language live streaming.
cross-border e-commerce has become a vibrant force driving china's foreign trade, growing nearly 10 times over the past five years. in the first quarter of this year, china's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports reached 419.5 billion yuan ($64.9 billion), up 46.5 percent year on year. measured by either exports or imports, the sector has been expanding much faster than overall foreign trade.
the government pledged to improve its policy support for cross-border e-commerce development and expand the pilot zones for cross-border e-commerce, according to a state council executive meeting on tuesday.
