The cross-border e-commerce import volume of the Ningbo bonded area totaled 16.12 billion yuan ($2.4 billion) in 2019, a rise of 63.4 percent year-on-year, according to statistics from Ningbo Customs.

The figure accounted for 20 percent of the national total, ranking first among 94 ports engaging in bonded cross-border e-commerce business nationwide.

An official from the management committee of the Ningbo bonded area attributed the robust growth in cross-border e-commerce imports in the bonded zone to the continuous efforts made by local customs and other departments to optimize supervision services and promote trade facilitation.

Last year, Ningbo Customs rolled out a series of measures to promote the sustainable and healthy development of bonded imports purchased via cross-border e-commerce networks.

In December, Chinese lifestyle social platform Little Red Book (Xiaohongshu) inaugurated an offline self-pick-up store in the Ningbo bonded area.

The store allows customers to order by scanning a QR code and picking up their goods after a several minute wait, greatly improving the shopping experience.

To date, the Ningbo bonded area houses nearly 700 cross-border e-commerce companies.

In addition to giants such as Tmall, JD.com and Koala, a number of local enterprises have also sprung up.

Yao Zhengzheng, president of Zhengzheng Electronic Commerce Co Ltd, revealed that the Ningbo-based company's sales volume doubled that of 2018 and surpassed one billion yuan in 2019.