The &#34;crazy run&#34; of China's e-commerce for decades is entering a new stage of high-quality development.
On April 6, the Ministry of Commerce and six other departments jointly issued the &#34;Guiding Opinions on Better Serving the Real Economy and Promoting High-Quality Development of E-commerce&#34; (hereinafter referred to as the &#34;Opinions&#34;), proposing 16 measures in five areas to build a framework for high-quality development of e-commerce.
The head of the E-commerce Department of the Ministry of Commerce stated that the drafting of the &#34;Opinions&#34; stems from the need to deeply implement the integration of the real economy and the digital economy, expand the institutional opening of e-commerce, stimulate the endogenous power, innovative potential, and open vitality of e-commerce, and help consolidate and strengthen the foundation of the real economy, better serving the high-quality development of the economy and society.
Industry insiders believe that the greatest significance of the &#34;Opinions&#34; lies in upgrading the positioning of e-commerce from merely &#34;increasing traffic&#34; to a strategic tool for serving the real economy, which means that the e-commerce industry has officially entered a new development stage of integration between digital and real economies.
Data, technology, and other resources open to physical merchants, e-commerce fully empowers the real economy
Promoting the deep integration of the real economy and the digital economy, e-commerce has become an important lever.
The &#34;Opinions&#34; clearly state the focus on empowering and increasing efficiency, consolidating and strengthening the foundation of the real economy. Specific measures include assisting small and medium-sized enterprises in transformation, deepening rural e-commerce, and cultivating industrial e-commerce.
The &#34;Opinions&#34; mention guiding e-commerce companies to launch &#34;small, fast, light, and precise&#34; digital products and solutions, opening data, channels, and technology to brand merchants, small and medium-sized enterprises, and individual businesses, providing support for store location selection, new product development, product display, inventory management, and more.
At the same time, it emphasizes the implementation of &#34;digital commerce revitalizing agriculture,&#34; promoting platforms to carry out production and sales docking and skills training in conjunction with the concentrated listing of characteristic agricultural products, establishing &#34;local good products&#34; sections, creating rural specialty product brands, and assisting in the upward movement of agricultural products.
The &#34;Opinions&#34; further mention carrying out &#34;industrial e-commerce benefiting enterprises docking&#34; activities, guiding e-commerce companies to leverage their advantages to digitalize the links of research and development, manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, and sales services, promoting efficient collaboration in the production and supply chain.
Fu Yifu, a special researcher at SuShang Bank, told Beike Finance that previous e-commerce policies focused more on the consumer end, while the &#34;Opinions&#34; start from the source, emphasizing that e-commerce must be rooted in the real economy. Through the three major measures of &#34;assisting small and medium-sized enterprises in transformation, deepening rural e-commerce, and cultivating industrial e-commerce,&#34; it breaks down the data barriers from production to circulation. &#34;This means that platforms cannot rely solely on traffic monetization but must open resources such as data and technology to physical merchants, truly allowing the digital economy to help strengthen the real economy.&#34;
From past practices, e-commerce has played an important role in promoting the quality and efficiency of the real economy.
Data from the Ministry of Commerce shows that China's e-commerce has developed vigorously and has been the world's largest online retail market for 13 consecutive years. By 2025, the R&amp;D intensity of major e-commerce platforms will exceed 8%, and the revenue from cloud computing and big data services will grow by 13.6%, becoming a new driving force for cultivating new productive forces; the online sales of agricultural products will grow by 9.9%, with over 2,000 &#34;e-commerce + industrial belts&#34; empowering industrial transformation and upgrading; the employment scale will increase to 79 million, and the express delivery business volume will grow by 13.6%, with more significant radiation effects
Shifting from &#34;Price Wars&#34; to &#34;Quality Wars&#34;: E-commerce Accelerates Institutional Opening
In addition to focusing on empowering the real economy through e-commerce, the &#34;Opinions&#34; also promote a higher level of dynamic balance between supply and demand in e-commerce by strengthening innovation leadership and advancing high-level openness, accelerating the institutional opening of e-commerce.
In terms of strengthening innovation leadership, the &#34;Opinions&#34; propose three measures: accelerating the application of technological innovation, vigorously developing quality consumption, and actively creating integrated carriers.
The &#34;Opinions&#34; state that support will be given to leading e-commerce companies to increase R&amp;D investment, strengthen core technology breakthroughs in key areas, and build an innovation ecosystem of &#34;collaboration between production and research, and transformation of learning and application&#34;; at the same time, a quality e-commerce cultivation action will be implemented to establish a standard system, promote e-commerce platforms to optimize traffic distribution, search ranking mechanisms, and enhance the weight of indicators such as product quality and service reputation, incorporating quality management and brand building into training courses to cultivate quality merchants and premium brands.
The &#34;Opinions&#34; also require the optimization of digital life services, promoting instant retail to integrate into the &#34;15-minute convenient living circle.&#34;
Fu Yifu believes that the &#34;Opinions&#34; require the optimization of traffic distribution and search ranking mechanisms on e-commerce platforms, enhancing the weight of indicators such as product quality and service reputation, which is a correction to the past &#34;low-price competition&#34; in e-commerce. The relevant regulations will promote e-commerce to shift from &#34;price wars&#34; to &#34;quality wars,&#34; reshaping the e-commerce consumption ecosystem and is expected to give rise to more domestic trendy products and quality merchants.
In advancing high-level openness in e-commerce, the &#34;Opinions&#34; focus on cross-border e-commerce and &#34;Silk Road E-commerce,&#34; proposing to promote the high-quality development of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones, organize special actions for brand cultivation, rule standard construction, and platform and seller overseas expansion in these zones, and require the continuous expansion of the &#34;Silk Road E-commerce&#34; circle of friends, deepening policy exchanges, industry connections, local cooperation, and capacity building, making good use of cooperative brands such as Cloud Lecture Hall, Silk Road Cloud Products, and National Pavilion to enhance the sense of cooperation among partner countries.
In accelerating institutional opening, the &#34;Opinions&#34; state that a number of institutional opening achievements will be formed in areas such as trade facilitation, international data services, and cross-border RMB settlement, accelerating replication and promotion to enhance the quality and upgrade of e-commerce openness. At the same time, research on rules, regulations, management, and standards in the e-commerce field will be strengthened, promoting the coordination of domestic and international rules in areas such as personal information protection and cross-border data flow.
Fu Yifu stated that overall, the &#34;Opinions&#34; transcend the planning scope of the e-commerce industry and become a systematic blueprint for promoting the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy in the first year of the 14th Five-Year Plan. &#34;By coordinating promotion with regulation, vitality with order, the 'Opinions' will reshape the competitive landscape of platforms, eliminate low-quality and homogenized competition, and through measures such as integrating instant retail into the '15-minute convenient living circle,' allow e-commerce to truly become a social infrastructure that empowers industries and benefits people's livelihoods.&#34;
Beijing News Beike Finance Reporter Pan Yichun
Editor Wang Jinyu
Proofreader Liu Baoqing

501310

160925

000300

The Chinese e-commerce industry is entering a stage of high-quality development. The Ministry of Commerce and five other departments have issued the "Guiding Opinions on Better Serving the Real Economy and Promoting High-Quality Development of E-commerce," proposing 16 measures aimed at promoting the deep integration of e-commerce and the real economy. The new regulations emphasize that e-commerce should serve the real economy, assist small and medium-sized enterprises in transformation, deepen rural e-commerce, and cultivate industrial e-commerce, while promoting the opening of data and technology to physical merchants to enhance overall economic efficiency

New E-commerce Regulations Released: From "Price Wars" to Quality Competition, E-commerce Empowers and Enhances the Real Economy