Cross-border e-commerce has become a very important emerging industry in the field of foreign trade,providing a new idea for China to release its consumption potential and promote consumption upgrading. In order totest whether the development of cross-border e-commerce will help upgrade the consumption structure, on the basisof the innovation of cross-border e-commerce import scale measurement indicators, the empirical research was carriedout based on panel data of 31 provincial-level administrative regions from 2003 to 2016. The results show that crossbordere-commerce imports have a significant direct promotion effect on the upgrading of the consumption structure.This conclusion has regional heterogeneity and group heterogeneity: The promotion effect of cross-border e-commerceimports on the upgrading of consumption structure is more obvious in the central and eastern regions and the residentswith low Engel coefficient.