Chengdu, Sichuan — one of China's four major footwear production bases — has long seen most of its companies focused on OEM work and domestic trade, lacking brand-building capability and pricing power. How to better "go global" and chart a new growth curve has been a difficult question. But that is quietly changing.
In February 2025, the Sichuan Provincial Department of Commerce signed a memorandum of cooperation with Amazon Global Selling. Over the past year and more, the two sides have worked deeply across nine competitive industrial belts — women's shoes, food, auto and motorcycle parts, apparel, building materials, furniture, bamboo products, and more — holding dozens of empowerment events across 12 cities and prefectures and reaching more than 5,500 participants. Industrial clusters such as Chengdu footwear, Mianyang smart hardware, and Leshan home furnishings have achieved scale in going global, fully validating the model of "government guidance, association promotion, and platform empowerment."
In women's shoes, visits to industrial-belt enterprises and associations have built close cooperation mechanisms between the global e-commerce platform and Sichuan's cities and prefectures. Regular seller salons dedicated to women's footwear provide systematic support from launch to operations, successfully bringing well-known brands and factories such as Cameido, Uncle Wu, Banfang, and Aijier onto Amazon. Among them, iiimmu's monthly sales climbed from about USD 500,000 at the start of 2025 to a peak-season high of USD 1.2 million, with annual sales approaching USD 10 million. Led by these front-runners, the Chengdu women's footwear belt is moving from the "zero to one" stage to "one to ten" scale expansion.
To amplify the "Sichuan experience," Amazon Global Selling released the West China Industrial Belt Joint Empowerment Plan at its 2026 West China Regional Seller Conference in Chengdu on July 30. Modeled on the past year's cooperation with the Sichuan Department of Commerce, the plan systematically extends the industrial-belt empowerment model to ten western provinces and autonomous regions — Chongqing, Shaanxi, Yunnan, Guizhou, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Xinjiang, and Xizang — working with local governments, industry associations, and service providers across three dimensions: policy guidance, capacity building, and service support. The plan aims to deeply empower ten key western industrial belts within two years, incubating and supporting 300 going-global brand sellers and cultivating 100 globally oriented sellers.
Western China boasts distinctive industrial resources that other regions find hard to replicate. Sichuan's panel furniture industry ranks among the nation's largest; Yunnan is the core production area for scaled preserved-flower manufacturing; and categories such as Shaanxi copperware and Zigong lanterns possess natural advantages in cultural identity and product recognition. Most companies in these categories, however, are still at the stage of "supplying coastal exporters who then sell overseas." As local cross-border operating capabilities improve, more companies are making the role shift from "supplier" to "going-global principal." Meanwhile, the successful transformation of benchmark belts such as Chengdu women's shoes and Chongqing auto and motorcycle parts is generating a spillover effect, prompting more local industrial belts to enter cross-border e-commerce — for example, inspired by Chongqing's auto-parts belt, Nanchong in Sichuan has proactively built cross-border e-commerce industrial parks. The geographic boundaries of the western going-global cluster continue to expand.
"Cross-border e-commerce is becoming an important engine for western inland regions to expand high-standard opening-up and drive high-quality foreign-trade development," said an official with the Sichuan Department of Commerce. The commerce authorities will continue to deepen strategic cooperation with platforms, fully leverage the synergy of "government guidance + platform empowerment + ecosystem support," and form joint forces in industrial upgrading, brand cultivation, talent development, and global market expansion — helping more western enterprises cross geographic and information barriers, accelerate their integration into global industrial and supply chains, and achieve brand going-global through cross-border e-commerce.
"West China has rich and distinctive industrial resources. In belts such as Chengdu women's shoes and Chengdu–Chongqing auto and motorcycle parts, companies have already built globally competitive brands on Amazon; categories such as Kunming preserved flowers, Chengdu home furniture, and Zheng'an guitars also have the industrial foundation to go global," said Qiu Sheng, Vice President of Amazon China and head of Asia-Pacific marketing and business development for Amazon Global Selling. "The past year of cooperation in Sichuan showed us that when industrial foundations meet systematic cross-border support, western enterprises are fully capable of building brands directly for global consumers — giving us the confidence to extend proven experience to a wider region." Amazon Global Selling will use AI tools, end-to-end supply-chain services, and local empowerment systems to help West China enterprises make product and brand decisions with a global vision from the moment they enter cross-border e-commerce — "global from day one."
Source: 中国商务新闻网 / 国际商报（记者 李子晨） · 2026-07-31