Amazon’s warehousing hub in Shenzhen streamlines shipping for Chinese sellers, cutting costs and delays amid rising competition and tariffs.
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How Amazon uses closer China supply ties to counter tariffs
Amazon officially opened the world’s first GWD facility in Shenzhen to more sellers on Wednesday, marking the US e-commerce giant’s efforts to deepen its ties with the Chinese supply chain
Published: 7:00pm, 17 Apr 2026
For pet food container seller Chen Junbin, customs used to be a major bottleneck when shipping from Shenzhen in southern China to his customers in the US.
“In the past, we had to handle all the paperwork and coordinate with multiple logistics suppliers ourselves; a single [customs] inspection could delay our shipment by a week,” said Chen, founder of Shenzhen Lightning Technology.
As one of the first sellers to test
Amazon’s Global Warehousing and Distribution (GWD) facility, the US giant’s new model for an “all-in-one” logistics hub, Chen has seen his shipping cycle slashed from an unpredictable two- to four-week period to as short as three days since joining the initiative last June.
By merging storage and customs clearance into one step, the facility allowed the company to deliver goods with “more frequent shipments” and “without repetitive paperwork”, Chen said.
Amazon officially opened the world’s first GWD facility in Shenzhen to more sellers on Wednesday, marking the US e-commerce giant’s efforts to deepen its ties with the Chinese supply chain. The move followed intensified competition from Chinese rivals Temu and Shein and a turbulent year of unpredictable tariff hikes for China’s “Made in China, sold on Amazon” community.
“With the GWD facility, Amazon is looking to ensure that more Chinese sellers and their supply chain are within its own scope of control,” said Wang Xin, executive chairman of Shenzhen Cross-Border E-Commerce Association.
“We are seeing an escalation of competition among the platforms,” Wang said. “They have been extending their reach not only to the consumer end, which is about the customer experience, but also to the business end, which is about mastery and control of the supply chain.”
Despite US-China trade tensions, China remains the most important supply source for Amazon. Chinese sellers accounted for half of Amazon’s global active seller base last September, marking the highest share ever, according to data from Marketplace Pulse.
Amazon’s Chinese competitors are also ramping up their investments to gain more control over local supply chains. In February, Shein founder Xu Yangtian pledged
more than 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion) to build a “smart supply chain system” in southern China’s Guangdong province.
The rapid rise of online fashion retailer Shein and PDD Holding’s budget shopping site Temu over the past few years has left Amazon “deeply anxious”, according to Wang.
Temu’s market share surged to 24 per cent last year from less than 1 per cent, putting it on par with Amazon, according to a January
survey published by the International Post Corporation. Shein held a 9 per cent share in 2025.
However, the overall Chinese cross-border seller community has been hit hard by new duty rules and tariffs imposed by the US government over the past year.
The US ended the “de minimis” exemption that allowed packages worth less than US$800 to enter the US duty-free, dealing a blow to Chinese merchants who relied on the rule to sell products to American customers at low prices through cross-border platforms including Amazon, Shein, Temu and ByteDance-owned TikTok Shop.
The value of China’s low-value goods exports to the US slumped by 51 per cent year on year in October, according to a report by AMZ123, a Shanghai-based cross-border e-commerce service provider.
Many
Chinese sellers had to raise prices and squeeze profit margins on their products to remain competitive, while cutting operational costs to keep their businesses afloat.
“Amazon’s move can act as a buffer against current trade policy uncertainties; whether it’s tariffs or overseas customs clearance rules, it will affect the end-user experience,” Wang said.
According to Amazon, storing inventory at the Shenzhen GWD centre rather than in the destination market allows merchants to avoid prepaying high duties on goods that could sit in a US warehouse for months, giving them greater cash flow flexibility.
The GWD model is designed to handle the middle-mile logistics between the factory floor in China and Amazon’s warehouses in the US. This includes local storage, customs clearance, cross-border shipping and inventory transfers – steps that sellers previously had to coordinate themselves.
By consolidating these functions, Amazon pledged to reduce storage costs for Chinese merchants by up to 45 per cent compared with holding inventory in US warehouses, and to shorten the shipping time by up to seven days.
Amazon’s initiative also fits into Beijing’s support for cross-border e-commerce and its broader trade strategy.
China’s customs department has been working closely with e-commerce platforms to integrate clearance into logistic hubs to improve efficiency, said spokesman Lyu Daliang on Tuesday.
E-commerce exports reached 473.6 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2026, according to Lyu.
“Cross-border e-commerce used to rely heavily on experience and, frankly, a bit of luck,” said Chen, the pet goods seller. “By solving the compliance, speed and labour costs, [the GWD model] can open a wider door for us to expand globally.”
