China’s cross-border e-commerce expected to hit $1.3 – 1.5 trillion in 2018 and over half of worlds retail ecommerce

Chinese cross-border e-commerce transaction reached 6.7 trillion yuan ($1.01 trillion) in 2016, up by 31.6 percent, chinanews.com reported Sunday, citing an index released at a forum held in Shanghai.

The Chinese Cross-Border E-commerce Index also predicted that by 2018, value of China’s import and export transaction via e-commerce, including retail and business-to-business, might hit 8.8 trillion yuan.

eMarketer.com predicts about $1.46 trillion in retail ecommerce for China in 2018.

EMarketer.com also has a forecast for world retail ecommerce.

People born in the 1980s were the major buyers, accounting for 59 percent of the cross-border orders in 2016, while those born in the 1990s made up 23 percent and those born in the 1970s accounted for 14.4 percent.

Most of these buyers were highly educated, employed in big corporate and had kids.

In the year 2016 and 2017, the best-selling goods were cosmetic products, baby-mummy products, shoes, clothes, health products, accessories and suitcases.

Shanghai, Beijing and Hangzhou are top three locations where people favored cross-border e-commerce. Shanghai consumers accounted for 11.9 percent of the entire cross-border buyer population, while Beijing consumers accounted for 11.1 percent and Hangzhou consumers for 3.8 percent.

Statistic: Gross merchandise volume of China's e-commerce market from 2008 to 2018 (in trillion yuan) | Statista
Find more statistics at Statista

China’s e-commerce industry has enjoyed above-average growth in the last few years. In 2013, gross merchandise volume on online shopping had amounted to about 1.8 trillion yuan. Chinese online shoppers are expected to spend about 4.5 trillion yuan on internet markets by 2017. According to the CNNIC, the number of online shoppers in China had surpassed the 300-million-mark in 2013.