China's cross-border e-commerce continues to expand with supportive policies

As China's foreign trade continues to grow steadily in traditional sectors, emerging business models, particularly cross-border e-commerce, are becoming key drivers of high-quality growth, fueled by a series of favorable government policies.

Seizing the opportunity presented by strong European demand for decorative items during the Christmas season, a foreign trade company based in Guangzhou City, south China's Guangdong Province, has intensified its efforts to promote products through livestreaming and optimize logistics to ensure rapid delivery.

"We rely entirely on overseas warehouses. In countries with smaller land areas, such as Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany, next-day delivery is typically available. For larger countries like the United States, most regions can expect delivery within two days," said Xu Yinxuan, deputy general manager of the e-commerce department under Guangdong Eagle Gifts Co.,Ltd.

Meanwhile, the company's new product series specially for upcoming Valentine's Day are also being shipped to overseas warehouses.

Over 95 percent of their exports are transported by sea, a cost-effective and efficient option compared with air freight, said Xu.

He said that the company's cross-border e-commerce business has surged from less than 5 percent of its total exports to over 50 percent this year.

In June, China's Ministry of Commerce and eight other departments issued guidelines to expand cross-border e-commerce exports and improve overseas warehouse infrastructure. In November, China's General Administration of Customs introduced measures to streamline related processes, including removing the requirement for cross-border e-commerce companies to register for overseas warehouse exports.

"In the first 11 months of this year, Guangzhou's cross-border e-commerce enterprises exported goods valued at 160 million yuan (around 21.92 million U.S. dollars) through overseas warehouses, marking a year-on-year increase of 84 percent," said Xie Mingxian, director of cross-border e-commerce supervision department under the Nansha Customs.

Innovative measures were also introduced in the Nansha comprehensive bonded zone to streamline returns from overseas consumers, further cutting costs for businesses.

"A more convenient way to return goods can be chosen based on the distribution of the company's own warehouse, flights, voyages, and its own transportation costs. This is expected to improve the company's cargo turnover rate and reduce its overall costs," said Ma Jifang, general manager of a logistics company in Guangzhou.

China's cross-border e-commerce continues to expand with supportive policies

A Canadian historian has shed light on how the horrors of the Nanjing Massacre were largely forgotten in North America, making it susceptible for distortion and denial of crucial facts.

In an interview with China Media Group (CMG), David Wright, an associate professor at the Department of History in the University of Calgary's Faculty of Arts, emphasized that the truth of the massacre in Nanjing is beyond dispute, yet several generations later, the West has not adequately preserved the memories of this history.

"My mother's and father's generation, they were alive when the Rape of Nanking happened. They were horrified to listen to reports on radios. And especially after the war was over, when the Tokyo war crime trials began, a lot more detail about the Rape of Nanking came out. In North America, the wartime generation remembered it and remembered it well. But then the next generation, my generation, baby boomers, that abhorrence was not passed on to us adequately well," Wright said.

The notorious Nanjing Massacre by Japanese troops led to over 300,000 deaths in 1937. According to the historian, the accuracy of this figure is supported by a robust body of evidence, but Japan's right-wing forces have nonetheless attempted to deny the number of victims as well as the severity of the crimes. Often, these claims rely on the absence of physical remains of the victims.

"They're dumped into the river. They're burned, a lot of them. You cannot find the remains. So they think they can find one or two errors you've made about photographs and from that conclude that the entire Rape of Nanking never happened. It's just nonsense. There is abundant evidence that something very, very terrible did happen in Nanjing," Wright said.

"And the people who deny it, I mean, historically they are nihilists. For them, history is all about image, not about fact. And if that thing really did happen in Nanjing, that's an inconvenient fact and they want to try to erase it by denying it," he added.

The Nanjing Massacre occurred after Japanese troops captured the then-Chinese capital on Dec. 13, 1937. Over six weeks, they killed approximately 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers in one of the most barbaric episodes of World War II.

Truth of Nanjing Massacre allows no distortion: Canadian historian