ACOLINK LTD hosted delegates of the China International Electronic Commerce Centre (CIECC) during their 4-day visit to Great Britain, from 16-19 October, 2018.

Recognising an important opportunity to educate the market about China while driving UK e-commerce prosperity, ACOLINK and CIECC met with Leeds University Business School as a potential pilot for their exclusive business development tool.

About YI MOOC

YI MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) is a multi-lingual e-learning platform, consolidating short video lectures on aspects of how to enter and succeed in China’s e-commerce market. The platform is already very successful in China, and CIECC is now looking at making it available to the global audience both in the private sector and academia.

It’s produced by the Training College of the CIECC, China’s only national education base for e-commerce professionals. The Training College is an institute implementing the National Project of Knowledge Renewal for Professionals in the area of e-commerce.

As CIECC is an agency under China’s Ministry of Commerce, (MOFCOM), this project’s cultivates of professional education is a state-sponsored, state-level venture.

With a combination of foreign and domestic e-commerce experts and resources from world-class education institutes, the training college provides comprehensive theoretical knowledge and practical skills training in many areas of knowledge, including: whole e-commerce ecosystem, regulations, customs, logistics, cross-border e-commerce and social commerce.

It continues professional education based on technical, professional courses dedicated to fully understanding, exploring, and implementing e-commerce.

Global E-commerce

The UK and Ireland are at the top of CIECC’s agenda for what will be an international venture.

In light of that, the CIECC is teaming up with key UK business accelerators in order to ensure optimal knowledge transfer to foreign learners and practitioners.

Li Wei, GM of the CIECC’s Training Business Department, says, “For a foreign audience, how you hear things, see things, and process information is different [from a Chinese audience]. The aim of this partnership is to make sure that the foreign audience can use it well — so we can all share in the benefits.”

Business specialists, supporting businesses in new market endeavours, see the potential in educating the market.

China’s government is completely invested in upgrading e-commerce and the support available to practitioners.

Mr Hu Yang, VP of CIECC and President of the Training Institute, says, “The metric of [YI MOOC’s] success is how many more people of the general public, as well as private institutions, are learning and gaining knowledge from this — both domestic and foreign.”

While Mark Robson, DIT Regional Director for Yorkshire and Humber, comments, “UK has the best e-commerce [in Europe], and 30% of the shopping during Christmas and New Year was from online. Exporting through e-commerce is our strategy to help more UK exporters to grasp wider markets like China. It would be great to see how we can use [YI MOOC] to help more of our UK businesses.”

This will be a significant addition to the UK’s recently announced New Export strategy, which aims to increase overseas sales from 30% to 35% of GDP.

State-Qualified, Renowned Lecturers

YI MOOC uses state-qualified, award-winning lecturers and the platform has a significant social following. CIECC’s annual lecturer awards pre-launch ceremony was viewed by 640,000 online viewers this year.

In China, the programme is already used to train central and local government officials, as well as top-level managers to drive China’s ¥9 trillion yuan e-commerce market.

The platform gives the UK a competitive advantage in e-commerce. YI MOOC provides a birds-eye perspective of China’s e-commerce market, unhindered by commercial rivalries or lack of access to pioneer experts.

Already, it’s a significant resource integration unlike any other — developed from a thinktank of over 130 experts ranging from China research institutions and universities to key industry players like Alibaba and JD representatives.

Who is the CIECC?

China International Electronic Commerce Centre (CIECC) is a principal agency under China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM). They are policy-makers responsible for shaping and implementing the dynamics of the world’s biggest e-commerce market, China, at the state level.

As China’s international e-commerce pioneer, CIECC participates in drafting e-commerce standards and rules in commercial and trade areas.

This year’s delegation builds on the CIECC’s last trip to the UK, where they began extensive government-to-government talks on international e-government initiatives.

ACOLINK is the CIECC’s UK representative and this development is building on the strategic partnership signed in 2017.