"Has anyone used Cainiao Standard for Special Goods? Is it OK?" Kécio F. Silva, a student in Recife, the capital city of Pernambuco state in the northeast of Brazil, asked about the Chinese express delivery service on a Facebook group. He soon received a response from Igor Henrique, another user, "I have. It was swift. I can't remember the exact time, but it all went smoothly."

Slow delivery has long been a big obstacle to cross-border trade. As a loyal customer of Chinese cross-border online shopping platform AliExpress, Bárbara, who did not give her full name, still remembers her first experience of using the platform seven years ago. "I purchased a pair of pink cotton-padded boots, warm and pretty," she said. However, by the time she received her order, it was already summer. The boots had taken half a year to travel from the seller in China to her home in Brazil. "Customs clearance was very slow," she explained. "But in recent years, the logistics has been speeding up."

"We are working hard to increase our logistics capacity," Albert Yan, head of Chinese logistics provider Cainiao's business in South America, told Beijing Review. "We've arranged eight cross-border charter flights a week, established local smart distribution centers and increased the number of smart lockers for receiving packages." Today, products from Chinese sellers can often reach Brazilian consumers in a little more than one week.

Both Cainiao and AliExpress are owned by e-commerce giant Alibaba. Cainiao's locker network provides a contactless logistics service with flexible pickup times for consumers.

Due to COVID-19-related restrictions and improvements to online payment systems, online shopping in Brazil is exploding. A joint survey by Octadesk, a São Paulo-based software firm, and Brazilian polling firm Opinion Box, reveals that 61 percent of consumers in Brazil now prefer online shopping to offline shopping. The survey also showed that 70 percent of consumers have increased the frequency of their online shopping over the past year, and this is placing greater demand on logistics services.

"Several years ago, I was the only one in this apartment building who was fond of online shopping, but now, when I go to the security guards' office to collect my parcels, the room is almost completely full of parcels delivered by Mercado Livre (Brazil's largest customer-to-customer trading platform), SHEIN (a Chinese online fast fashion retailer) and Amazon. There are so many of them that it now takes a long search to locate the ones that are mine," Bárbara said.

Currently, Brazil, Mexico and Chile are all important markets for Cainiao. Across Latin America, Brazil is where this logistics company relies most heavily on local resources for operations. "Chinese businesses are much more competitive than Brazilian ones, fueling worries among local businesses of losing market share," said Ivan Filipe Fernandes, a public opinion researcher from the Federal University of ABC in Santo André and São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil. "Some people will unavoidably lose money or feel disgruntled, but in most cases, we do not reject foreign investment... The more investment in Brazil, the better," he added.

However, Chinese cross-border logistics companies operating in Brazil do more than invest in the country and sell Chinese goods.

"Businesses in the local logistics sector are important clients of Cainiao, including Piticas and Facily," Yan said. Also, Brazilian brands tend to set up their own e-commerce platforms. Expensive equipment and sprawling scales of business make recouping costs difficult. China-made package-sorting equipment, which is compact and less expensive, helps cut businesses' logistics costs and improve efficiency. "Technology is our advantage and we can help local businesses transform from the traditional operating model to e-commerce," Yan added.

Cross-border logistics is by no means a one-way business. As Fernandes sees it, the biggest issue facing the Brazilian economy is a lack of markets for its products. Cainiao is working to open air and sea routes to China by improving its logistics network. More than 200 Brazilian small and medium-sized brands hope to depend on leading import e-commerce platform Tmall Global, another Alibaba brand, for training and for their products to enter the Chinese market. 

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson

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