Chinese cross-border eCommerce will rise at a rate of 18 per cent annually through to 2020, predicts market research house Mintel in a new report.

Mintel’s Haitao Retailing says Chinese spending on cross-border eCommerce soared more than 60 per cent in 2015.  

“The reason we chose to do this report was both due to Haitao becoming so large, and because this market is now becoming well-regulated, and encouraged by the central government,” said the report’s author Matthew Crabbe.

“This was therefore clearly an important development in China’s international trade, its domestic consumer market, and as a route to entry for foreign companies hoping to sell to Chinese consumers.”

Mintel surveyed more than 3000 Chinese online shoppers, of whom nearly 60 per cent said they had bought foreign products online from domestic shopping websites between June and November.

The most popular products were beauty and skincare lines from South Korea, Japan and France; and food from Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and New Zealand. They also shopped for personal electronic devices from Japan and the US.