Customers look for merchandise at a store featuring Australian products at the cross-border trading town. (Photo/Xinhua)
According to a recent report on cross-border e-commerce by multinational consultancy Accenture, China is expected to become the world's biggest cross-border business-to-customer market by 2020.
The online-to-offline shop-ping pavilions, official operations of which began in June, are part of Hangzhou's effort to boost cross-border e-commerce.
The city, which is home to China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, was chosen last year by China's central government as the country's first comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zone.
Zhang Ke, head of the Hangzhou cross-border trading town, said that the country pavilions represent more than just the buying and selling of global goods. "They are to promote the culture of living in a global village via cross-border e-commerce," he said.
"We want to build an entire industrial cluster based on cross-border e-commerce. It is hard to believe that a few years ago this place was full of factories," Zhang said.
New office buildings can now be seen where factories once stood and incubators have been set up to support the development of startups in a bid to attract cross-border companies to settle in the area.
Official statistics showed that cross-border e-commerce transactions in Hangzhou surged to $3.46 billion last year, the first year of its operation as a comprehensive pilot zone for cross-border e-commerce, from less than $20 million in 2014.
