A cross-border e-commerce industry alliance was established on May 28 in Yantai, a coastal city of East China's Shandong province, to promote the city's cross-border e-commerce industry development.

The alliance is supported by the Yantai municipal commerce bureau and eight local universities. The two sides signed a talent training agreement and invited six experts as business consultants.

The alliance aims to strengthen cooperation between universities and enterprises, facilitate talent training and promote construction of cross-border e-commerce talent training bases to attract more e-commerce talents.

The rapid development of the cross-border e-commerce industry in Yantai has increased the city's demand for comprehensive talents who are skilled in big data, user experience, platform operation and financial services. Yantai is expected to require 2,000 such professionals by 2022.

In 2020, the city's total imports and exports in cross-border e-commerce industry hit 1.84 billion yuan ($288.3 million) , ranking third in the province's total volume. From January to May, the import and export volume of cross-border e-commerce is expected to exceed 4 billion yuan.

There are currently more than 1,200 companies in the city that have started online cross-border marketing. The area of domestic storage facilities and the number of overseas warehouses have both doubled increase compared with 2019.