Zhejiang Sanle Plastic Co, a Zhejiang province-based company that makes plastic products, is one of the many companies that is expanding into emerging markets.

Eighty percent of the company's business comes from overseas. Faced with a decline in that source of demand, Yu Mulin, who founded the company with her husband in 2000, has started to look for opportunities in emerging markets.

"We used to wait for the clients to come to us," she said. "Now, though, we are going out and trying to attract clients, especially some in less-explored markets."

About 1 percent of the company's sales come from emerging markets, and its clients include the Japanese cosmetic company Shiseido Co Ltd and the US software company Microsoft Corp.

Chinese companies have increasingly been using e-commerce to send exports to Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific.

From July 2011 to June this year, e-commerce exports to Argentina increased by 96 percent, to Israel by 72 percent and to Ukraine by 71 percent, according to PayPal figures.

Out of the 40 million SMEs in China, only 5 million are export-focused, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, and the SMEs that use e-commerce to export are still a fraction compared with the total.

chenlimin@chinadaily.com.cn