Laixi, a county-level city in Qingdao, Shandong province has been promoting the "dual circulation" strategy, where domestic and overseas markets reinforce each other, said local officials.

In the first three quarters of 2020, the city's gross industrial output above designated scale reached 31.46 billion yuan ($4.78 billion), up 2.1 percent year-on-year, while investment in fixed assets maintained a high growth rate of over 30 percent.

From January to August this year, the city's exports reached 11.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 1.3 percent. In this period, the city's import and export of agricultural products reached $676.96 million, up 21.1 percent.

The beautiful scenery of Laixi, a county-level city in Qingdao, Shandong province [Photo/qingdaonews.com]

Due to the challenges caused by the epidemic and e-commerce, the traditional furniture manufacturing industry has been suffering from declining profits and the inability to export goods.

For this reason, Qingdao Good Worker's Furniture Co, located in Laixi Guhe Industrial Zone, has transformed itself from an OEM to a company with its own brands.

"Our company has since 2004 been exporting to other countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia. This year, we have adjusted our strategy and paid more attention to expanding our presence in the domestic market," said Liu Jianjun, general manager of the company.

To achieve this goal, the company has set up a professional e-commerce team that is in charge of operations, promotions and online marketing. The company's Tmall store has raked in 19 million yuan since the beginning of this year.

This year also saw Laixi launch supportive measures to guide local foreign trade enterprises to "turn crisis into opportunity" amid the pandemic and take advantage of domestic demand to establish a new development pattern.

Local export enterprises have been encouraged to make active use of domestic e-commerce platforms, social networks and new media platforms to expand brand awareness and win over domestic consumers with high-quality products.

In order to help enterprises enhance their development, Laixi has also introduced cross-border e-commerce platforms to guide the "digital" transformation of foreign trade enterprises.

The city has cooperated with e-commerce giants such as Alibaba, JD and Tencent and established related service centers to promote the development of cross-border e-commerce.