Multilingual cross-border e-commerce practice and pathways for training foreign language service professionals

Abstract

The digital economy has restructured the logic of international trade faster than universities have been able to restructure the logic of training graduates. Cross-border e-commerce is no longer a peripheral market but a core infrastructure of global trade: according to China's Ministry of Commerce, the volume of cross-border trade reached 2,38 trillion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 15,6%. This market places demands on language professionals that traditional foreign language programs do not cover: sustained multilingual output in live-stream settings, commercial rhetoric across cultural boundaries, and the integration of linguistic competence with the operational skills of online sales. For China's western regions, the problem is doubly acute: local specialized products carry real export potential, but professionals with the required combination of language and commercial skills remain chronically scarce. This article examines multilingual cross-border e-commerce practice as an educational platform and analyzes pathways for training foreign language service professionals. Drawing on the framework of new liberal arts education and the principle of practice-based learning, it proposes five reform directions: curriculum optimization, standardization of practical activities, deeper university-enterprise cooperation, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and the improvement of assessment systems. All five directions are united by a single purpose: to close the gap between what students know and what they can actually do in a real professional context.