The sixth China-Arab States Expo ceremoniously unfolded on September 21 in Yinchuan, capital of northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
This year’s expo features trade fairs and forums on clean energy, modern agriculture, cultural tourism, health, water resource utilization, meteorological cooperation and cross-border e-commerce, among which attracted multitudinous well-known overseas platforms, including Amazon and Souq, Noon, Daraz, MEIG Group (e-commerce platforms Wadi, Helpling, Vaniday, Easytaxi, Lamudi and Carmudi, etc.) eBay and PayPal, as well as domestic cross-border platforms, including AliExpress, JD international, SheIn, Temu, S.F. Express, and the like.
As for cutting-edge technologies, this expo demonstrates web crawler, search engine marketing, information flow promotion, VR shopping and artificial intelligence (AI), providing merchants with more accurate decision-making support and customers with a more vivid and comprehensive user experience, together with big data and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Yinchuan’s local cross-border e-commerce platform Sliver Gate sells surpass 3,000 products from more than 30 countries and regions around the world, including but not limited to imported big-name cosmetics, daily care, maternal and child products, nutritional health care, kitchen households, etc., adopting the new retail model of “online sales + offline display”.
“Our cross-border O2O experience center uses centralized procurement from overseas sources, centralized stocking in domestic bonded warehouses, and full customs supervision, turning the overseas purchasing that used to take more than 15 days into the current instant purchase in 2-3 minutes, by which maximizing the ‘global sourcing of same quality and same price’, Sun Shuai, the person in charge of the Silver Gate booth, introduced. “At this year’s event, we aim to promote our e-commerce platform and expand our market in Arab countries and find suitable local partners,” Sun added.
A recent report jointly released by Dubai South E-Commerce Zone and global market research organization Euromonitor International shows that the e-commerce market size in the Middle East will be approximately USD 31.7 billion in 2021, and is expected to exceed USD 49 billion by 2025. At present, relying on the advantages of industrial supply chain, Chinese e-commerce platforms have gained a lot of attention in the Arab region. So far, the coverage rate of Chinese e-commerce platforms among Internet users in the six Gulf countries has reached 80 percent. From the perspective of big data product selection, operations and supply chain, SheIn is a leader in China’s cross-border e-commerce, with more than 120 million registered users, and revenue growth of more than 100 percent for 8 consecutive years, making it the cross-border clothing e-commerce company with the highest sales volume in China.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Over the past decade, the China-Arab States Expo has effectively promoted economic, trade and investment exchanges and cooperation between China and BRI countries, including Arab states, utilizing the advantages of China’s huge consumer goods market and global e-commerce network.