E-commerce is becoming a major engine driving southeast Asia's economic recovery. During the coVID-19 epidemic prevention and control period, e-commerce has effectively promoted consumer recovery and potential release. China and Southeast Asia have been closely cooperating in cross-border e-commerce, providing strong support for the economic recovery of Southeast Asia as soon as possible.

The number of online shoppers in Southeast Asia is expected to double from last year to 310 million by 2020, according to a new forecast by bain & Company, a global strategy consultancy. Google temasek 2019 southeast Asia digital economy report previously predicted that the size of the e-commerce market in southeast Asia will be 38 billion us dollars in 2019, and it is estimated that the e-commerce market in the region will reach 153 billion us dollars in 2025. The booming e-commerce is becoming an important force driving southeast Asia's economic recovery.

Continue to unleash growth potential

At Thailand's TPI International Logistics Sorting Warehouse on the outskirts of Bangkok, despite the weekend, staff are busy sorting packages sent from overseas to Thailand, including a large number of online shipments from e-commerce platforms. The staff said that since the beginning of this year, the number of online shopping express items in the warehouse has increased significantly. Due to the lack of manpower, the distribution of express items is not timely, and many people in Bangkok who are anxious will directly drive to the warehouse to pick up the items. Kongnika, a Bangkok resident, told the Newspaper that due to the epidemic, she did most of her shopping online in the first half of this year. She could not count the number of times she placed orders on e-commerce platforms such as shrimps and Laizanda, a sharp increase compared with previous years.

During the epidemic prevention and control period, more and more consumers in Southeast Asian countries choose to shop through e-commerce platforms, and the business data of e-commerce platforms generally rise in the same period. According to incomplete statistics, the online transaction volume of daily necessities and take-out food in Southeast Asia increased by 50% to 400% from March to May this year, and many sellers' online sales increased by at least 50% compared with the same period last year. The Thai E-commerce Association predicts that the number of sellers and product sales on major e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia will quadruple in 2020 compared with 2019.

Online supermarket RedMart's weekly sales in Singapore more than quadrupled recently, as more than 1.5 tonnes of unsalable vegetables from Malaysia were sold out, southeast Asian e-commerce giant Lezanda said. In the first four months of this year, the platform received 185 million orders in Indonesia alone, up 120 percent from a year earlier, according to public data from Xiapai, another Southeast Asian e-commerce giant. In addition, the number of online shoppers outside the central urban areas of xipi platform has increased significantly, with the Malaysian market growing by four times and Thailand and Indonesia by three times. According to iPrice Group, a Malaysian data analysis agency, the e-commerce economy has witnessed explosive growth during the epidemic prevention and control period, and has become one of the fastest growing industries in Southeast Asia.

Assonthi Thammasat, an associate professor at thammasat University's School of Economics, told the Financial Times that despite the rapid growth, the penetration rate of e-commerce in Southeast Asia is still relatively low -- in Thailand, for example, it is only about 3 percent. The development of e-commerce in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries is in the ascendant and has broad prospects.

Promote the overall development of the region

With the continuous expansion of e-commerce market in Southeast Asia, online shopping mode is gradually affecting the business form in southeast Asia, and relevant industries are actively adjusting policies and measures.

The Philippines' e-commerce market is growing at 20-30 per cent a year, according to data. Shopping malls in Manila, the capital, are expected to be 12% empty this year as e-commerce platforms rise, according to local media reports. Joy Bundock, senior manager of research at Colliers International, said that as more and more consumers prefer to shop online, bricks-and-mortar malls will have to change and vacant buildings can be turned into warehousing and logistics centers to cater to the e-commerce trend.

In June this year, in order to change the poor performance caused by the epidemic, Singapore's Sunstar Mall conducted a live broadcast of "Shopping Festival" on the center's mobile app for the first time, promoting more than 40 discount brands from 16 stores online in the form of "interaction and entertainment", which achieved good results. "Now that consumers are more concerned about online interaction, we have to create a new mode of online shopping to give consumers a better experience," said Anthony, suntech's vice President of operations.

E-commerce has also created new opportunities for Indonesian farmers. The Vegetable Family, an agricultural cooperative in Indonesia, has been supplying fresh fruits and vegetables through traditional farmers' markets to metropolises like Jakarta, the capital. The sudden outbreak disrupted the operation of the traditional market, and the cooperative's turnover dropped by more than 60 percent. In times of crisis, e-commerce platforms help a lot. Through cooperation with e-commerce platforms such as Laizanda and Shrimps, Vegetable Home has helped more than 2,500 farmers from 89 villages to sell unsalable produce. Digital agriculture is booming in many parts of Indonesia, and many entrepreneurs' e-commerce projects are attracting attention from government authorities and universities.

"The epidemic has changed the consumption behavior of many people, and the digital economy represented by e-commerce will create great value." Emil Hernich, an academic from the Business School of The National University of Singapore, believes that the epidemic prevention and control has limited people's travel, but cross-border e-commerce plays an important role with strong logistics chains. Many smes have built new supply chains and sales chains with the help of e-commerce platforms and achieved growth. The e-commerce industry will become an important engine leading the accelerated economic recovery in Southeast Asia.

We will create new highlights in our cooperation with China

In the fight against the epidemic, China and Southeast Asian countries have been cooperating closely in cross-border e-commerce, which has provided strong support for the accelerated economic recovery in Southeast Asia. Thailand coconut, Malaysia "Cat Mountain King" durian, Myanmar mango... Many products with Southeast Asian characteristics are selling well through e-commerce platforms and are favored by more and more Chinese consumers. Since the beginning of this year, trade between ASEAN countries and China has overcome the impact of the epidemic, showing a good momentum of growth against the trend, and cross-border e-commerce has played an important role.

In addition to conducting cross-border trade directly on e-commerce platforms, Chinese enterprises have also brought mature experienced technologies and operation modes to the early-stage e-commerce market in Southeast Asia, helped improve the technology, logistics and payment systems of local e-commerce companies, and brought emerging marketing modes such as live streaming to Southeast Asia.

Take Laizanda as an example. Founded in 2012, the platform operates in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. In 2016, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba invested in and took a controlling stake in Laizanda. According to reports, after alibaba took a stake in the company, it first upgraded the entire e-commerce platform and then equipped more than 30 warehousing centers in more than a dozen cities in Southeast Asia to improve the "last mile" logistics capacity. Chinese companies have also helped the platform offer consumers a variety of payment options. Today, Laizanda has grown into one of the largest e-commerce platforms in THE ASEAN region, with more than 50 million active consumers annually.

Chinese enterprises are also strengthening their e-commerce cooperation with Southeast Asian countries in many other aspects. For example, Alibaba has cooperated with Thailand and Malaysia to build a world e-commerce platform to help small and medium-sized businesses with digital customs clearance, rapid customs clearance and shorter logistics time. JD Central, an online shopping platform created by JINGdong together with Thailand Shangtai Group, has become one of the top 10 online shopping platforms in Thailand since its launch.

The year 2020 is the Year of China-Asean Digital Economy cooperation, and e-commerce has become a new highlight of China-Asean digital economy cooperation. Lin Yu-hui, SECRETARY-GENERAL of ASEAN, predicted that the digital economy in ASEAN would increase from 1.3% of ITS GDP in 2015 to 8.5% by 2025. "China is leading the way in developing digital infrastructure and is a valuable partner of ASEAN in promoting the development of digital economy in the region," he said. Asunsi believes that Southeast Asian countries should take the year of Digital Economy cooperation as an opportunity to carry out exchanges and cooperation with China in the field of e-commerce, further improve the development pattern of e-commerce in Southeast Asia, and take e-commerce as a starting point to promote the recovery of regional economy as soon as possible.