Empowering China’s cross-border e-commerce: high-quality development explored through fsQCA

In recent years, Chinese cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) firms have experienced rapid growth, playing an increasingly vital role in the global market. However, this expansion is accompanied by persistent challenges, including inefficient marketing, costly cross-border communication, and limited financial support. Despite these issues, the key factors driving CBEC firms’ high-quality development remain insufficiently explored. This study fills this gap by leveraging a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify the key drivers of high performance and propose actionable strategies for industry practitioners and policymakers. Based on the theoretical framework of high-quality growth and financial data from 95 listed CBEC companies in China, the research reveals that: first, no single factor alone guarantees high- or low-quality development of CBEC firms, but market expansion, employees’ educational background, and government’s financial support are the main core causal conditions for the high-quality development of CBEC companies; second, CBEC enterprises’ high-performance can be achieved through three driving paths: Market expansion driving, Core competence—Policy driving and External conditions driving; third, an analysis of companies experiencing low-quality growth reveals that this condition can be attributed to a lack of market expansion and highly educated employees. This study offers a comprehensive analytical framework to explore the intricate interplay between internal and external factors influencing the trajectory of CBEC firms. Integrating fsQCA with traditional quantitative methods addresses key gaps in CBEC research. In addition, the study highlights the importance of aligning market expansion strategies, workforce development, and government policy support to drive sustainable performance.