From Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, and the State Port Administrat
International trade is a transnational transaction of goods and services. The goods must involve the entry and exit of the customs of the two countries, and the funds are related to the international balance of payments, subject to foreign exchange management regulations, plus the distance between the counterparties and the vast oceans. For many years, when it comes to international trade, it is often reminiscent of foreign-language negotiations, the magnificent container terminal, or the 10,000-ton giant ship that slashes through the waves in the vast ocean. In short, the general impression that international trade gives people is that it cannot be done easily by those who are waiting for it.
Indeed, engaging in international trade once required not only the right to operate foreign trade, but also has high technical content and complicated operations. An international trade may be of great value, and the foreign currency will be recovered in the end. In the early 1990s, the international trade major was one of the hottest registrations and the highest scores for the college entrance examination, and entering a foreign trade company was undoubtedly one of the best jobs at that time. For a long time, international trade has always been an important part of high-end international business activities.
So, is it still difficult to develop international trade now? The answer is: nowadays it has become quite easy to do cross-border trade.
If you start offline, such as opening a store in Zhejiang Yiwu Small Commodity Market or participating in some exhibitions (such as the Canton Fair, etc.), you may be able to have customers from overseas buy your goods for export; online will be simpler, such as Amazon, eBay Register an online shop on international platforms such as, shopee, wish, etc., as long as your goods are on the other side of the ocean and someone sees it online, then if they can be sent overseas by international mail, after receiving the overseas payment on the platform, an international trade will be finished. Practitioners of international trade through online platforms now have a better name: cross-border e-commerce.
In the early stage of reform and opening up, the main international trade business of foreign trade companies connected the two ends of the domestic and overseas commodity markets. The international trade business not only exported some traditional domestic products such as silk and tea to developed countries in exchange for foreign exchange, but also sold many overseas at that time. Products that were not available were imported into China, such as color TVs and refrigerators originally produced overseas at that time. Before my country joined the WTO, the country had a special Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation in charge of foreign trade. At that time, ordinary enterprises could not do foreign trade. International trade was generally concentrated in foreign trade companies, that is, foreign trade companies had foreign trade franchise and agency rights. Because foreign trade companies are responsible for the import and export agency business of a large number of companies, the import and export orders are mostly a collection of goods from multiple companies, so the amount of international trade orders at that time is relatively large.
Since international trade was mostly handled by large foreign trade companies in the early days, ordinary companies had neither the ability nor the power to handle international trade, which brought prosperity to the foreign trade industry and foreign trade companies. However, after the full liberalization of foreign trade monopoly at the beginning of this century, the number of large-scale comprehensive foreign trade companies has gradually decreased. Production enterprises no longer need to rely on professional foreign trade companies, but can handle import and export business on their own. At the same time, the number of small companies and individuals involved in foreign trade business has also increased, and international trade has gradually become as common as domestic trade.
Over the years, the international trade business has increasingly shown an obvious development trend, that is, the amount of each cross-border transaction order is becoming smaller and smaller. For example, for a company I know, the average number of a single international trade order was about 30,000 US dollars a few years ago, but now the average has dropped to only 3,000 US dollars per order. In fact, in the entire foreign trade industry, the average scale of companies engaged in international trade is becoming smaller and smaller. The list of international trade is getting smaller and the enterprises are getting smaller. This can be called the “two smalls”; at the same time, due to the further deepening of international economic and trade cooperation, the total volume of international trade has increased year after year, so the total number of international trade orders is still increasing. The bigger the number, the larger the number of small companies doing international trade, which can also be called the "two big".
The original international trade was controlled by many large companies, and the amount of each order was considerable, but now companies are becoming more flexible and small, and orders are more scattered.
The trend of "two small and two big" in international trade is just like the fact that many large orders and large companies in cross-border trade have been broken into pieces. This phenomenon can be called the "fragmentation" of international trade.
People have already experienced this "fragmentation" of international trade. For example, many people have friends who open online stores on platforms such as Amazon after work. These online stores are small in scale and have few varieties, but focus on subdivided categories and sell suitable domestic products to foreign countries. At first, their "trading company" was so small that they did not necessarily exist in the form of a company. If the online store does not have overseas warehouses, they will often sell only one or two items per order, so the amount of an "international trade" order can be as small as a few hundred. Dollars are also common. This is completely different from the previous professional foreign trade companies. A foreign trade company has to consider at least one or half container for a single shipment, and the amount is often tens of thousands of dollars or more. This fragmented international trade has become an alternative to the large aggregated orders of the original foreign trade companies. Decades ago, people did not dare to imagine that one day international trade could still do this, as simple as going to a vegetable farm to buy a few. Cucumber is so casual.
Behind the fragmentation of international trade is the increasing development of the world economy, information technology, and changes in global consumer culture.
First of all, the production capacity of global commodities has long surpassed the model that must be profitable through mass industrial production.
In the past, manufacturers often produced the same product in large quantities to reduce the cost of a single product and increase profits. Under the conditions of increasing production capacity in the modern economy, production companies have long been able to achieve small batches, multiple varieties and diversified designs, especially in the production of many consumer products, such as the clothing industry. Repeated production of the same product in large quantities is likely to cause Consumers are disgusted, and the faster the style changes, the lower the repetition rate, and the smaller the batch, the more favored by consumers. Similar and well-known cases such as fast-moving clothing brands ZARA, H&M, C&A, etc., all belong to this type of small batch, fast fashion. This change in the production neighborhood will undoubtedly lead to faster changes in international trade goods, more frequent transactions, and smaller orders.
Secondly, the comprehensive network of global shopping has basically straightened the path for consumers to choose products, and the process of selecting products has long been changed.
Under the previous shopping method, large import and export companies made bulk selections for consumers, and the goods were distributed by stores after they arrived. As consumers, they selected from the imported physical goods on the spot. The era of this kind of shopping is gone forever. The current model is more inclined to a large number of sellers and buyers directly communicating through online stores on platforms such as Amazon. It is the choice for sellers to directly face end consumers across borders. This point-to-point sales model can bring more There are more odd numbers, but without the large wholesale orders organized by foreign trade companies before, the amount of each order is even smaller. In this way, in the traditional period, international trade carried out by means of international telephone, fax, and telex has finally become a normal transaction in which buyers and sellers are directly contacted more and more in the era of the highly developed Internet.
The development of information technology has caused changes in the process of product selection in cross-border trade, and has also made the list of international trade more fragmented.
Third, under globalization, no matter what kind of culture, the choices of individuals in society are becoming more and more individualized nowadays.
It can be seen that both at home and abroad, the consumer sector is increasingly emphasizing individuality and distinctiveness, often with limited output of hot products resulting in one after another online explosives, thereby highlighting the personality of the owners of the explosives. The output of these products is generally not large, even deliberately reducing the output, the scarcity effect of the manufactured products can increase consumers' desire to buy. Moreover, the retention time of consumers' attention is becoming shorter and shorter, resulting in shorter and shorter time for product popularity, which further increases the variety and frequency of consumption.
Such changes in consumer culture that are taking place in various countries are reflected in international trade and have also caused an increase in batches of cross-border trade and a decrease in the number of single transactions.
The fragmentation of international trade has changed the foreign trade industry itself and has led to a new sub-industry that absorbs a large number of employed people: cross-border e-commerce.
The starting point of cross-border e-commerce is relatively low, and most of the individual businesses seem to have limited scale, but gathering sand into a tower has increased my country’s total export volume and relieved domestic excess capacity. Moreover, because of the characteristics of "small ships turning around quickly", Responsive, often able to detect cross-border demand in time and create new trade opportunities. This decentralized model actually improves the effectiveness of economic resource allocation in the social system.
In order to support the development of cross-border e-commerce, my country has also successively introduced a series of supporting policies. For example, in the international settlement of cross-border e-commerce, cross-border e-commerce is listed as a new trade format, which is managed by financial services and regulators. Jointly improve the facilitation of cross-border settlement, etc. The incentives and support of various policies will further promote and accelerate the development of the cross-border e-commerce industry.
The fragmentation of international trade is also changing the industry rules related to international trade such as cross-border logistics and cross-border payment.
Take cross-border payment as an example. In the settlement of international funds that international trade relies on, banks’ inherent international business settlement methods, such as remittance, collection and letter of credit, have long been formed. These three settlement modes are called the three types of international settlement. Large basic methods, but these three settlement methods of the original bank are more suitable for larger orders, and they have become more restrictive when it comes to new international trade formats.
For example, the international letter of credit, a cross-border financial product, although it can provide more reliable protection to buyers and sellers in international trade, it is not suitable for cross-border trade with a small amount due to its high technical content and complicated operations. With the fragmentation of international trade, the business matching the letter of credit business is gradually decreasing. In this way, the international settlement products such as the letter of credit of commercial banks are becoming more and more obsolete and out of touch with practice. The use rate of traditional international settlement products represented by letter of credit business as settlement tools in the entire international trade is getting lower and lower. This situation also reflects the fragmentation of international trade. Settlement products are in urgent need of change.
When there is demand, there will be new services and even new industries. With a large number of small amounts of international trade cross-border payment demand, cross-border e-commerce payment service sub-industries have now emerged. More well-known service providers such as PingPong, Lianlian International, iPayLinks, Airwallex ) And a series of third-party payment companies that specialize in providing cross-border payment services. Among these companies, the peak amount of cross-border transactions provided in a single day exceeds 400 million U.S. dollars, and there are companies that have gone through D-round financing with a financing amount exceeding 500 million U.S. dollars. There have also been unique companies with a valuation of more than 1 billion U.S. dollars. Hornbeast Enterprise. They not only provide cross-border collection and payment for international trade, but also provide supply chain financing, tax declaration, tax rebate, tax payment and shop opening services, and are almost forming a new non-bank cross-border financial service segment. And all of this can be said to be due to the "fragmentation" of international trade.
Not all businesses in the field of international trade will become more and more fragmented. Fragmentation mainly occurs on the 2C side, that is, in international trade that has a direct relationship with the end consumer; and on the 2B side, that is, in the business-to-business trade business ( For example, the trade of bulk commodities such as crude oil and minerals), the amount of a single transaction is still huge. Taking the international trade of crude oil as an example, the price of a ship of oil is almost as high as 100 million U.S. dollars. International trade of other bulk commodities such as iron ore and coal. All of them still retain the traditional habit of large-scale transactions.
Although a large part of international trade shows a trend of fragmentation, a large number of large transactions will still maintain a certain proportion for a long time. In other words, although the number of slices of internationally traded cakes has greatly increased, and the slices of many cakes have also become smaller, there will still be a considerable number of large slices. However, those parts that have been fragmented are enough to change the practice, rules and future trends of international trade, and deserve the attention of international trade practitioners, banks, customs, other regulators, and service providers.
The finer a business is done, the finer it may be. Fragmentation of international trade is actually the process of refinement of international trade, which is destined to be a long process. Continuing to pay attention to and understand the changes will make us better prepared for new trends. This is exciting and exciting, and I believe it will also bring better returns.
From Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, and the State Port Administrat
International trade is a transnational transaction of goods and services. The goods must involve the entry and exit of the customs of the two countries, and the funds are related to the international balance of payments, subject to foreign exchange management regulations, plus the distance between the counterparties and the vast oceans. For many years, when it comes to international trade, it is often reminiscent of foreign-language negotiations, the magnificent container terminal, or the 10,000-ton giant ship that slashes through the waves in the vast ocean. In short, the general impression that international trade gives people is that it cannot be done easily by those who are waiting for it.
Indeed, engaging in international trade once required not only the right to operate foreign trade, but also has high technical content and complicated operations. An international trade may be of great value, and the foreign currency will be recovered in the end. In the early 1990s, the international trade major was one of the hottest registrations and the highest scores for the college entrance examination, and entering a foreign trade company was undoubtedly one of the best jobs at that time. For a long time, international trade has always been an important part of high-end international business activities.
So, is it still difficult to develop international trade now? The answer is: nowadays it has become quite easy to do cross-border trade.
If you start offline, such as opening a store in Zhejiang Yiwu Small Commodity Market or participating in some exhibitions (such as the Canton Fair, etc.), you may be able to have customers from overseas buy your goods for export; online will be simpler, such as Amazon, eBay Register an online shop on international platforms such as, shopee, wish, etc., as long as your goods are on the other side of the ocean and someone sees it online, then if they can be sent overseas by international mail, after receiving the overseas payment on the platform, an international trade will be finished. Practitioners of international trade through online platforms now have a better name: cross-border e-commerce.
In the early stage of reform and opening up, the main international trade business of foreign trade companies connected the two ends of the domestic and overseas commodity markets. The international trade business not only exported some traditional domestic products such as silk and tea to developed countries in exchange for foreign exchange, but also sold many overseas at that time. Products that were not available were imported into China, such as color TVs and refrigerators originally produced overseas at that time. Before my country joined the WTO, the country had a special Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation in charge of foreign trade. At that time, ordinary enterprises could not do foreign trade. International trade was generally concentrated in foreign trade companies, that is, foreign trade companies had foreign trade franchise and agency rights. Because foreign trade companies are responsible for the import and export agency business of a large number of companies, the import and export orders are mostly a collection of goods from multiple companies, so the amount of international trade orders at that time is relatively large.
Since international trade was mostly handled by large foreign trade companies in the early days, ordinary companies had neither the ability nor the power to handle international trade, which brought prosperity to the foreign trade industry and foreign trade companies. However, after the full liberalization of foreign trade monopoly at the beginning of this century, the number of large-scale comprehensive foreign trade companies has gradually decreased. Production enterprises no longer need to rely on professional foreign trade companies, but can handle import and export business on their own. At the same time, the number of small companies and individuals involved in foreign trade business has also increased, and international trade has gradually become as common as domestic trade.
Over the years, the international trade business has increasingly shown an obvious development trend, that is, the amount of each cross-border transaction order is becoming smaller and smaller. For example, for a company I know, the average number of a single international trade order was about 30,000 US dollars a few years ago, but now the average has dropped to only 3,000 US dollars per order. In fact, in the entire foreign trade industry, the average scale of companies engaged in international trade is becoming smaller and smaller. The list of international trade is getting smaller and the enterprises are getting smaller. This can be called the “two smalls”; at the same time, due to the further deepening of international economic and trade cooperation, the total volume of international trade has increased year after year, so the total number of international trade orders is still increasing. The bigger the number, the larger the number of small companies doing international trade, which can also be called the "two big".
The original international trade was controlled by many large companies, and the amount of each order was considerable, but now companies are becoming more flexible and small, and orders are more scattered.
The trend of "two small and two big" in international trade is just like the fact that many large orders and large companies in cross-border trade have been broken into pieces. This phenomenon can be called the "fragmentation" of international trade.
People have already experienced this "fragmentation" of international trade. For example, many people have friends who open online stores on platforms such as Amazon after work. These online stores are small in scale and have few varieties, but focus on subdivided categories and sell suitable domestic products to foreign countries. At first, their "trading company" was so small that they did not necessarily exist in the form of a company. If the online store does not have overseas warehouses, they will often sell only one or two items per order, so the amount of an "international trade" order can be as small as a few hundred. Dollars are also common. This is completely different from the previous professional foreign trade companies. A foreign trade company has to consider at least one or half container for a single shipment, and the amount is often tens of thousands of dollars or more. This fragmented international trade has become an alternative to the large aggregated orders of the original foreign trade companies. Decades ago, people did not dare to imagine that one day international trade could still do this, as simple as going to a vegetable farm to buy a few. Cucumber is so casual.
Behind the fragmentation of international trade is the increasing development of the world economy, information technology, and changes in global consumer culture.
First of all, the production capacity of global commodities has long surpassed the model that must be profitable through mass industrial production.
In the past, manufacturers often produced the same product in large quantities to reduce the cost of a single product and increase profits. Under the conditions of increasing production capacity in the modern economy, production companies have long been able to achieve small batches, multiple varieties and diversified designs, especially in the production of many consumer products, such as the clothing industry. Repeated production of the same product in large quantities is likely to cause Consumers are disgusted, and the faster the style changes, the lower the repetition rate, and the smaller the batch, the more favored by consumers. Similar and well-known cases such as fast-moving clothing brands ZARA, H&M, C&A, etc., all belong to this type of small batch, fast fashion. This change in the production neighborhood will undoubtedly lead to faster changes in international trade goods, more frequent transactions, and smaller orders.
Secondly, the comprehensive network of global shopping has basically straightened the path for consumers to choose products, and the process of selecting products has long been changed.
Under the previous shopping method, large import and export companies made bulk selections for consumers, and the goods were distributed by stores after they arrived. As consumers, they selected from the imported physical goods on the spot. The era of this kind of shopping is gone forever. The current model is more inclined to a large number of sellers and buyers directly communicating through online stores on platforms such as Amazon. It is the choice for sellers to directly face end consumers across borders. This point-to-point sales model can bring more There are more odd numbers, but without the large wholesale orders organized by foreign trade companies before, the amount of each order is even smaller. In this way, in the traditional period, international trade carried out by means of international telephone, fax, and telex has finally become a normal transaction in which buyers and sellers are directly contacted more and more in the era of the highly developed Internet.
The development of information technology has caused changes in the process of product selection in cross-border trade, and has also made the list of international trade more fragmented.
Third, under globalization, no matter what kind of culture, the choices of individuals in society are becoming more and more individualized nowadays.
It can be seen that both at home and abroad, the consumer sector is increasingly emphasizing individuality and distinctiveness, often with limited output of hot products resulting in one after another online explosives, thereby highlighting the personality of the owners of the explosives. The output of these products is generally not large, even deliberately reducing the output, the scarcity effect of the manufactured products can increase consumers' desire to buy. Moreover, the retention time of consumers' attention is becoming shorter and shorter, resulting in shorter and shorter time for product popularity, which further increases the variety and frequency of consumption.
Such changes in consumer culture that are taking place in various countries are reflected in international trade and have also caused an increase in batches of cross-border trade and a decrease in the number of single transactions.
The fragmentation of international trade has changed the foreign trade industry itself and has led to a new sub-industry that absorbs a large number of employed people: cross-border e-commerce.
The starting point of cross-border e-commerce is relatively low, and most of the individual businesses seem to have limited scale, but gathering sand into a tower has increased my country’s total export volume and relieved domestic excess capacity. Moreover, because of the characteristics of "small ships turning around quickly", Responsive, often able to detect cross-border demand in time and create new trade opportunities. This decentralized model actually improves the effectiveness of economic resource allocation in the social system.
In order to support the development of cross-border e-commerce, my country has also successively introduced a series of supporting policies. For example, in the international settlement of cross-border e-commerce, cross-border e-commerce is listed as a new trade format, which is managed by financial services and regulators. Jointly improve the facilitation of cross-border settlement, etc. The incentives and support of various policies will further promote and accelerate the development of the cross-border e-commerce industry.
The fragmentation of international trade is also changing the industry rules related to international trade such as cross-border logistics and cross-border payment.
Take cross-border payment as an example. In the settlement of international funds that international trade relies on, banks’ inherent international business settlement methods, such as remittance, collection and letter of credit, have long been formed. These three settlement modes are called the three types of international settlement. Large basic methods, but these three settlement methods of the original bank are more suitable for larger orders, and they have become more restrictive when it comes to new international trade formats.
For example, the international letter of credit, a cross-border financial product, although it can provide more reliable protection to buyers and sellers in international trade, it is not suitable for cross-border trade with a small amount due to its high technical content and complicated operations. With the fragmentation of international trade, the business matching the letter of credit business is gradually decreasing. In this way, the international settlement products such as the letter of credit of commercial banks are becoming more and more obsolete and out of touch with practice. The use rate of traditional international settlement products represented by letter of credit business as settlement tools in the entire international trade is getting lower and lower. This situation also reflects the fragmentation of international trade. Settlement products are in urgent need of change.
When there is demand, there will be new services and even new industries. With a large number of small amounts of international trade cross-border payment demand, cross-border e-commerce payment service sub-industries have now emerged. More well-known service providers such as PingPong, Lianlian International, iPayLinks, Airwallex ) And a series of third-party payment companies that specialize in providing cross-border payment services. Among these companies, the peak amount of cross-border transactions provided in a single day exceeds 400 million U.S. dollars, and there are companies that have gone through D-round financing with a financing amount exceeding 500 million U.S. dollars. There have also been unique companies with a valuation of more than 1 billion U.S. dollars. Hornbeast Enterprise. They not only provide cross-border collection and payment for international trade, but also provide supply chain financing, tax declaration, tax rebate, tax payment and shop opening services, and are almost forming a new non-bank cross-border financial service segment. And all of this can be said to be due to the "fragmentation" of international trade.
Not all businesses in the field of international trade will become more and more fragmented. Fragmentation mainly occurs on the 2C side, that is, in international trade that has a direct relationship with the end consumer; and on the 2B side, that is, in the business-to-business trade business ( For example, the trade of bulk commodities such as crude oil and minerals), the amount of a single transaction is still huge. Taking the international trade of crude oil as an example, the price of a ship of oil is almost as high as 100 million U.S. dollars. International trade of other bulk commodities such as iron ore and coal. All of them still retain the traditional habit of large-scale transactions.
Although a large part of international trade shows a trend of fragmentation, a large number of large transactions will still maintain a certain proportion for a long time. In other words, although the number of slices of internationally traded cakes has greatly increased, and the slices of many cakes have also become smaller, there will still be a considerable number of large slices. However, those parts that have been fragmented are enough to change the practice, rules and future trends of international trade, and deserve the attention of international trade practitioners, banks, customs, other regulators, and service providers.
The finer a business is done, the finer it may be. Fragmentation of international trade is actually the process of refinement of international trade, which is destined to be a long process. Continuing to pay attention to and understand the changes will make us better prepared for new trends. This is exciting and exciting, and I believe it will also bring better returns.