Overseas Chinese, Chinese international students, and cross-border e-commerce

Abstract

In recent years, cross-border e-commerce participated by overseas Chinese has developed rapidly, becoming sizable commercial activities of international scale. However, the current public discourse and academic literature on China-related cross-border e-commerce have remained at a very primitive level. Many existing analyses still simply believe that the rapid and massive growth of China-related cross-border e-commerce is because of the lack of confidence of Chinese consumers in Chinese products and the attraction of cheap made-in-China products to foreign consumers. Based on many new analyses and the study of Daigou activities engaged by Chinese Australians and Chinese international students in Australia, this article offers a new and in-depth analysis of the link between cross-border e-commerce and the Chinese overseas. This article argues that cross-border e-commerce activities engaged by Chinese Australians and Chinese international students are closely related the distribution of these people in different countries and the size of their communities. The second reason is because of China’s export-oriented economy and the inevitable consequences of cosmopolitan tendency that has become increasingly common among middle-class consumers. Based on the above analyses, this article also looks at the role of overseas Chinese and Chinese international students in cross-board e-commerce and their new characteristics, while offering an assessment of its possible development.