China's trade in services continued to grow steadily

Photo Source: cfp.cn

The Ministry of Commerce recently disclosed that in the first nine months of this year, China's service imports and exports totaled 4.47227 trillion yuan, increased by 18.2% year on year, indicating that the country's service trade maintained growth. Service exports expanded 20.5% year on year to 2.14802 trillion yuan; service imports totaled 2.32426 billion yuan, an increase of 16.1% from a year ago.

Trade in knowledge-intensive services grew steadily. In the first nine months of this year, such trade raked in 1.86487 trillion yuan, up 10.2% year on year. Specifically, the exports of knowledge-intensive services reached 1.04302 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.9%; intellectual property royalties and telecommunications, computer and information services were the two categories with the fastest growth rates at 22.5% and 17.4% respectively. The imports of knowledge-intensive services gained 4.8% year on year to 821.85 billion yuan; it's worth noting that the imports of insurance services soared 56.2% from a year ago.

The imports and exports of travel services continue to recover. In the January-September period, trade in travel services expanded 7.4% year on year to 623.66 billion yuan. Excluding tourist services, China's services trade grew 20.2% year on year in the first nine months of this year and soared 52.6%, compared with the same period in 2019.

Themed "Cooperate for Better Development, Innovate for a Greener Future", the 2022 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS), like the previous sessions, was organized both online and onsite in two venues, including comprehensive and thematic exhibitions. In total, there were 152,000 square meters of exhibition space, 7 summit forums, and over 100 professional forums and industrial conferences. This year's CIFTIS outperformed the last session in terms of the total number of attendees and exhibitors, the number of foreign attendees and exhibitors, and the size of transactions. It provided a pragmatic cooperation platform and huge market opportunities for all participants, injecting new vitality into the recovery of global service trade.

Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter to the 2022 CIFTIS, stating that "CIFTIS is a crucial platform for China to expand opening-up, deepen cooperation and pioneer innovation, which has made a positive contribution to promoting the development of global services industry and services trade". President Xi also explicitly mentioned the measures of "broadening market access in the services sector, facilitating opening-up in cross-border service trade, expanding the function of opening-up platforms, and striving to establish a high-standard opening-up system for the services sector". The letter has fully embodied the determination of the CPC Central Committee with President Xi at its core in staying committed to promoting high-quality development through high-level opening-up, and also bolstered our confidence in expanding the opening-up of services sector.

Han Zheng, Vice Premier of the State Council, delivered a keynote speech at the Global Trade in Services Summit of 2022 CIFTIS, saying that "China will establish a high-standard opening-up system for the services sector and develop national demonstration zones for the innovation-driven development of trade in services. We will support Beijing and other localities in piloting cross-border flow of data and in building benchmark cities for the global digital economy, to lead the development of a new service economy by virtue of new business forms and models in the digital domain". These indicate that China has clarified specific measures for further opening-up.