The impact of e-commerce features on cross-border Russian-Chinese trade and trade of the countries of the "One belt, one road" initiative

The article is devoted to identifying the features of the impact of e-commerce on cross-border trade of the countries of the Chinese initiative “One Belt, One Road”. Unlike traditional trade, e-commerce uses digital channels, and its development at the present stage in a number of countries of the Initiative, and primarily in China, has surpassed the scale of classical retail and the volume of physical trade by an order of magnitude. The rapid digitalization of China’s economy, especially serious state support for economic and technological zones and the concentration of the material infrastructure of a number of global industries has made this state a leader in the use of e-commerce technologies on a cross-border scale. In some areas of the PRC’s economy, for example, in light industry from mass to luxury segments, Russia and China have an urgent need to develop cross-border trade, primarily with e-commerce tools. The authors of the article, studying the current Russian-Chinese trade relations, identify factors affecting the potential for cross-border trade of both these two countries and the export-import relations of the countries of the “One Belt, One Road” Initiative. Among the most seriously influencing factors in the development of cross-border trade in e-commerce tools, the authors of the article see three: environmental standards of business support, the spread of digital platform applications of e-commerce and competition of economic agents in the digital environment, which led to the formation of so-called “ecosystems of business ecosystems”.