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Top1. Introduction
In the digital era, modern technologies are changing the world at exponential speed. As an upgraded version of traditional trade, e-commerce is considered to be one of the tools for improving efficiency and increasing the scale of domestic trade, while cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) is becoming the driver of digital globalization and is of strategic importance, causing major changes in world trade. The average annual growth rate of e-commerce is about 20%, but in the period from 2017 to 2020, the volume of e-commerce grew by astonishingly 76%. Despite the enormous progress of CBEC, currently, many developing countries among which there are also WTO members are still weakly involved in CBEC.
In the digital era, the interdependence of the economies of different countries from each other and the vulnerability of the global economic system in the context of disruption of regional economic ties is more obvious than ever. Regional cooperation between countries is a fundamental component of the global economy’s mechanism. In this aspect, the Chinese initiative Belt and Road (BRI) is a good example of regional cooperation between BRI countries, united by common interest of prosperity of nations and expansion of goods and services export possibilities.
Looking back to the roots of the BRI, it has been firstly put forward by President Xi in 2013 as an ambitious attempt towards the development of economic cooperation of the Eurasian continent. The BRI is truly meant to revive and improve the essence of the historic Silk Road. Due to its nature of building the historic Silk Road, it focuses primarily on countries in Asia, East Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, which forms a region composed primarily of emerging markets. Through the implementation of the Initiative, new prospects for the development of cross-border cooperation between European and Asian countries are evolving. In 2021, the volume of e-trade in goods between China and other BRI countries reached 11.6 trillion CNY (approx. $1.7 trillion), a 23.6% increase over the previous year, constituting 29.7% of national total foreign trade (China’s Ministry of Commerce, 2021). In Chinese national top plans, the importance of accelerating the development of CBEC is repeatedly mentioned. Since the second decade of the 21st century, the relevant policies of China's CBEC have entered a period of explosion that shows the strategic height given by the Chinese government. Within integration of soft and hard power China as the initiator of BRI has taken the lead in the global e-commerce market. The further expansion of comprehensive CBEC pilot zones, improvements in tax reduction policies, and construction of transport and logistics infrastructure connecting China with countries located along the historic route played a great role in the advancement of CBEC. As an emerging market, China demonstrates unprecedented flourishing of e-commerce. BRI countries are beneficiaries from Chinese policy not only in the sphere of infrastructure projects and Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) flows, but also in integrating into regional economic processes, via participating in regional foreign trade, since e-commerce has a quite large potential for the development in these countries.
Despite the big potential and current achievements in the field of e-commerce made by developing countries, their contribution to the world’ s economy via participating in e-commerce and empirical verification of the factors affecting the state of CBEC are rarely investigated by scholars and even by international organizations and agencies, due to a widespread preconceived opinion about their minor role and weightless contribution to e-commerce before. On the contrary, there are a number of studies devoted to CBEC in developed countries, such as in the USA and EU, which have a long history dating back to the 1960s when e-commerce appeared (Burt & Sparks, 2003; Talha & Salim, 1970). Future exploration of potential of developing countries in the field of CBEC is an important direction for understanding modern processes of globalization. The basis of the potential for the development of e-commerce in developing countries is an advantage in the population, which means in the consumer ability of the population and in the workforce. In the nearest future, developing countries will occupy a niche in the global economy and become the engine for its further development.