In the first eight months of this year, cross-border e-commerce exports through Shanghai Port reached 106.98 billion yuan, up 28.7% year on year, maintaining growth for eight consecutive months.
Low-Cost Sea Freight Becomes the Preferred Choice for SMEs Going Global
On September 22, at the Shanghai Maritime Cross-Border E-Commerce Operations Center at the Waigaoqiao Zhendong Terminal in Shanghai, a batch of thermal socks, thermal gloves and other cold-weather products worth about 150,000 yuan was shipped overseas under the customs supervision of the Shanghai Waigaoqiao Port Area Customs, reflecting a regulatory transformation by Shanghai Port aimed at addressing the pain points of fragmented orders in cross-border e-commerce.
Traditional sea freight uses the entire container as its smallest unit and lacks an LCL model suited to the multi-batch, small-volume nature of cross-border e-commerce. Small and medium-sized enterprises thus find themselves caught in a dilemma: they cannot afford to wait to fill an entire container, yet shipping separately is too costly. The difficulty of consolidated shipping has become a bottleneck for going global.
Shanghai Waigaoqiao Port Area Customs introduced an innovative master bill plus LCL supervision model. We deeply integrated master bill operations with the LCL model, allowing cross-border e-commerce goods under a bill of lading as the supervision unit to ride along with general trade export goods in mixed consolidation, and after customs supervision and release, they are loaded directly onto ships for export, said Yang Qisheng, chief of the second inspection section of the customs house.
Yang Chengwu, general manager of Youlian Da Trading (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., said: Now even a few cubic meters of goods can be arranged for sea shipment at any time, and logistics costs are directly cut by 30%. Liu Hongfeng, chairman of Shanghai Limeng International Logistics Co., Ltd., said: The new model has shortened cargo consolidation time by 50% and saves about 4,000 yuan in logistics costs per standard container on average.
In the first eight months of this year, Shanghai Customs supervised more than 10 million parcels of export goods under the sea freight cross-border e-commerce list model, with a value exceeding 10 billion yuan, doubling the level of the whole of last year and attracting goods from Amazon and other leading international platforms to gather at Shanghai Port.
Pudong Airport Cross-Border E-Commerce Imports and Exports Hit a New High
The number of cross-border e-commerce list declarations at Pudong Airport has ranked first nationwide in air transport for three consecutive years. In the first eight months of this year, the overall declaration volume of import and export cross-border e-commerce lists at Shanghai Pudong Airport reached 578 million tickets, with a value of 57.526 billion yuan, up 41.37% and 6.62% year on year respectively, both setting historical records.
Ms. Zhao, customs affairs manager of Shanghai Zhihui Robotics Co., Ltd., said: We use cross-border e-commerce platforms to showcase our latest products in real time and learn about consumer demand immediately. In the first eight months of this year, the company exported more than 3,000 tickets of robot parts, up 20% year on year.
On the export side, higher-priced goods such as mechanical keyboards, astronomical telescopes and wigs are gradually gaining a place, reflecting the upgrade from Made in China to Chinese brands. On the import side, personal care and color cosmetics, fashion apparel and affordable luxury goods are highly favored, while imports of gaming consoles, outdoor camping gear and other leisure and entertainment products have risen steadily, mapping the trajectory of domestic consumption upgrading.
To handle massive amounts of data, Shanghai Pudong International Airport Customs explored the application of BI technology to build a data ecosystem foundation featuring one-screen overview and drill-down linkage. We empower business growth with digital and intelligent supervision, letting platform data run ahead and sparing enterprises from repeated errands afterward, said Wang Huihong, deputy director of the customs house.
Air Freight Service Network Further Expanded
On August 31, a batch of daily necessities for cross-border e-commerce worth 6.14 million yuan completed customs clearance, security screening and consolidated palletizing at the Songjiang air pre-station and was transported 60 kilometers to Pudong International Airport for shipment to Europe. Since it began operation on November 13, 2025, and as of the end of August this year, the Songjiang air pre-station has exported a total of 10,854 tons of goods worth 730 million yuan, with more than 9.07 million cross-border e-commerce parcels reaching destinations worldwide.
The station integrates traditional operational steps, and enterprises can make online appointments for inspection upon arrival, achieving one declaration, one inspection, one security check and one-stop release. Lin Dapeng, deputy chief of the first cargo control and inspection section of Songjiang Customs, said: We embed customs supervision into the warehousing and logistics operations of enterprises and supplement it with non-intrusive smart inspection equipment, enabling the vast majority of goods to clear customs without noticeable intervention.
From having to run back and forth in the past to one-stop clearance now, the logistics time for cross-border e-commerce goods exported through the pre-station has been shortened by an average of 30%.
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