The 2021 Alibaba.com Cross-border E-commerce Summit was held in Tongzhou district, Nantong on Dec 11.

In a bid to meet the diversified purchasing needs of overseas buyers and provide more development ideas for local enterprises in Nantong, the East China branch of Alibaba.com – Alibaba Group's business-to-business (B2B) platform that helps facilitate foreign trade – launched a cross-border e-commerce summit to help local companies realize digital transformation towards global sales.

At the summit, operation experts of the home textile, fabric and electric tool industries from Alibaba provided guidance on operation and cross-border development.

"With large space for the future, Tongzhou is an important market for us," said Zhao Lei, general manager of Nantong Yiqi Network Technology Co Ltd, a local service center of Alibaba.com in Nantong. "Tongzhou has distinctive geographical advantages, concentrated industries and strong support from government, for which reasons we choose to hold the summit here to help more Tongzhou brands go global."

At present, over 200 enterprises from Tongzhou mainly engaged in the home textile industry, have established a cooperation relationship with Alibaba.com. Their turnover and order quantity both doubled over last year.

In recent years, the cross-border e-commerce in Tongzhou district has been on the rise. Since Nantong Airport Industrial Park was approved as the city's only pilot for cross-border e-commerce trade in 2015, the district's export order quantity and value have increased from 190,000 orders and $3.4 million in 2016 to 301,000 orders and $20.7 million in 2019, ranking top among Jiangsu province in terms of export scale.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the purchasing habit of some overseas buyers. Therefore, more and more enterprises are seeking growth points in international markets. It is inevitable that cross-border e-commerce will become one of the core strategies for enterprises' development, Zhao added.