China to further boost high-quality development of service trade

China will make further efforts to advance innovation and the high-quality development of the country's service trade sector, Wang Dongtang, an official with the Ministry of Commerce, has said in an interview with Xinhua.

The 2024 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) opened in Beijing on Thursday. Over the years, China's trade in services has developed rapidly, with a steadily expanding trade scale, continuously optimizing structure, and continuously enhancing international competitiveness.

"During the past decade, the average annual growth rate of service trade stood at 6.2 percent in U.S. dollar terms, higher than the global average growth rate and the growth rate of China's trade in goods over the same period," Wang said.

In 2023, the country's total import and export volume of services reached a record high of 6.6 trillion yuan (about 927 billion U.S. dollars), the official added.

Meanwhile, knowledge-intensive service trade increased to 41.4 percent of total service trade in 2023. Exports of knowledge-intensive services accounted for 57.5 percent of the total service exports, an increase of 7.8 percentage points over the previous year. "This indicates that the competitiveness and value of China's service trade exports are constantly improving," he said.

From January to July of this year, China's service trade saw a 14.7 percent year-on-year growth to 4.2 trillion yuan, with both imports and exports registering double-digit growth.

"Currently, global service trade and service industry cooperation are developing in depth, and the process of digital, intelligent and green development is accelerating," Wang noted. "Service trade has become an important driving force for economic globalization."

He said China has been actively expanding the imports of high-quality services, while encouraging the expansion of knowledge-intensive service exports and providing new development opportunities for the world with China's large market.

To boost opening up, China has been actively aligning with international high-standard economic and trade rules, and promoting the compatibility of rules, regulations, management and standards in the field of service trade over the past few years.

Earlier this year, China rolled out national and pilot free-trade zone versions of negative lists for cross-border trade in services to boost opening up.

"We will continue to make efforts in the policy interpretation and implementation of the negative lists for cross-border service trade, and study and formulate a corresponding management system, so as to promote the orderly opening up of cross-border trade and constantly improve the level of service trade liberalization and facilitation," the official said.

As for promoting new business models and new patterns in the sector, Wang pledged to follow the trend of digital, intelligent and green development of trade in services, and actively foster new driving forces for the development of trade in services.

Wang also called for establishing and optimizing the service trade promotion system, and giving full play to the role of major exhibitions such as the CIFTIS.

In terms of international economic and trade cooperation, he said that efforts will be made to further deepen service trade cooperation with countries along the Belt and Road and cultivate more growth points for cooperation.

China will expand multilateral, bilateral and regional cooperation mechanisms for trade in services, and support the construction of international cooperation parks for service trade in areas where conditions permit, said the official.