The cross-border e-commerce business is burgeoning like never before in Hangzhou, capital of eastern Zhejiang province, serving as a major impetus to the city's fast-growing digital economy, according to city officials and business leaders.

The city's comprehensive pilot area for cross-border e-commerce - set up in 2015 and the first of its kind in China - became a successful catalyst for more growth when it launched a new plan this year to encourage the integrated development of the e-commerce and traditional manufacturing sectors.

Dubbed "new trade, new service and new manufacturing", the plan involved setting up three databanks for the top 300 benchmark companies, as well as big sellers and cross-border e-commerce brands in the pilot area, to help over 10,000 manufacturers and trade companies to upgrade through digitalization.

A large number of manufacturers and trading companies in the textiles and garments sectors, as well as the outdoor leisure products and household and bathroom products sectors, joined the plan. These quickly became big sellers, with annual sales ranging from over $10 million or even $100 million, by making efficient use of e-commerce platforms, according to the administrative office of the pilot area.

Officials said that over the past three years, the pilot area has accelerated digital applications. These have helped increase the capacity for shared data, built a credibility system for crossborder e-commerce - by setting up a credibility rating system based on their trade data for 14,500 companies - and developed intensive and smart logistic networks that enable the goods from Hangzhou to reach most destinations in the world.

Based on the experiences accumulated from Hangzhou's pilot program, China has built more of such pilot areas in different cities, with the number rising from 13 in 2016 to 35 currently.