28 pilot projects inject new momentum into service trade (Rui Finance)
A few days ago, the "Comprehensive Deepening of Service Trade Innovation and Development Pilot Program" was officially issued. The new round of service trade innovation and development pilots expanded from the original 17 pilot areas to 28 pilot areas, further highlighting the new era of service trade in the national region. Role in development strategy. On August 19, Director Xian Guoyi of the Department of Trade in Services of the Ministry of Commerce stated at a press conference held by the Ministry of Commerce that he would use a new round of service trade innovation development pilots as a platform and breakthrough point to comprehensively promote the reform, opening up, and innovation of service trade. Vigorously promote economic transformation and upgrading and high-quality development.
Promote the comprehensive deepening of service trade reform
"The executive meeting of the State Council held on July 29 pointed out that it is necessary to give full play to the role of service trade in stabilizing foreign trade and foreign investment, and to explore reforms around broadening open areas and improving convenience to promote higher levels of opening up." Xian Guoyi introduced, this round The pilot project is a "comprehensive deepening" on the basis of the previous two rounds. It focuses on promoting the reform, opening up and innovation of service trade, and proposes 8 pilot tasks and 122 specific measures in three aspects.
Regarding reforms, centering on the decentralization or cancellation of examination and approval powers in the service sector, and relaxation of market access, 16 measures were proposed, covering areas such as transportation, tourism, education, land planning, engineering design, and business services. The management of the Ship Business Transportation Certificate is as follows Power of affairs, the right to approve schools for children of foreign personnel, expand the qualification scope of technology import and export operators, and simplify the approval process of foreign travel agencies. At the same time, in terms of promoting the cross-border flow of goods, funds, technology, personnel, data and other elements, 38 facilitation measures are proposed to further build a development environment conducive to the liberalization and facilitation of service trade.
In terms of opening up, in the fields of transportation, education, medical care, finance, professional services, etc., 26 initiatives are focused on, mainly to allow overseas service providers to enter the Chinese market through cross-border delivery and natural person movement in more areas, such as in China For domestic NVOCC operations, there is no need to be a Chinese corporate legal person; in pilot areas where conditions are met, a pilot program for domestic law firms to hire foreign lawyers as foreign legal advisers; Taiwan residents are allowed to register individual industrial and commercial households in the pilot areas.
In terms of innovation, in accordance with the development trend of the digital economy under the new situation, the national level will vigorously promote the development of new business models and models such as digital services, copyright services, pharmaceutical research and development, inspection and testing, and online education on pilot platforms. At the same time, we will carry out digital renminbi pilot projects, facilitate the use of mobile payment by foreigners in China, promote the development of services such as "two ends outside" research and development, testing, and promote the development of international boutique competitions and other business model innovations.
The reporter learned that the first round of pilot projects that began in 2016 focused on the introduction of supporting policies in terms of finance, taxation, finance, and facilitation. The second round of pilots has made new breakthroughs in opening up to the outside world, launching 6 opening facilitation measures and 34 policy guarantee measures. "The new round of pilot tasks has been comprehensively deepened, with more emphasis on in-depth reforms, high-level opening up, and all-round innovation. The corresponding policy measures are richer in content and involve a wider range." Xian Guoyi said, "From the perspective of the'quantity' of the new measures, There were more than 80 more pilot projects in the last round; in terms of the'quality' of the new measures, the degree of openness, policy strength, and reform depth were all much greater than those of the previous two rounds."
Development opportunities in the central and western regions
Expanding the opening up of service areas is an important exploration direction for innovation pilots.
This year's government work report proposed that a negative list of cross-border service trade should be issued. Xian Guoyi said that under such a general background, expanding opening up has become a key task of this round of pilot projects. "We have put forward 26 opening-up measures in conjunction with relevant departments, adhering to the principles of combining element-based and institutional-based opening, coordinating openness with supervision, and linking pre-access and post-access, so as to expand open areas in an orderly manner and promote cancellation. Or relax the restrictive measures on service trade; explore the path of institutional opening, and focus on the opening of emerging service industries in pilot areas to conduct stress tests." Xian Guoyi said.
It is worth noting that half of the newly added pilot areas this time are in the central and western and northeast old industrial bases, a higher proportion than the previous two rounds of pilots. Xian Guoyi pointed out that the reason for this layout is that, on the one hand, it is the need to implement the high-quality construction of the "One Belt and One Road", the development of the western region, the revitalization of the Northeast and other national development strategies; on the other hand, in recent years, the service industry and services in the central and western regions The pace of trade development is accelerating, and the foundation and conditions for institutional innovation are available. "We hope that these pilot areas can become the leaders in the development of service trade in the central and western regions, play a demonstrative and leading role, and promote the improvement of the overall level of service trade in the central and western regions." Xian Guoyi said.
Xian Guoyi said that in the future, it will pay more attention to the development of service trade in the central and western regions, increase support, and work with these pilot areas to combine their own industrial characteristics and location advantages to formulate specific and feasible implementation plans for digital trade, transportation, tourism, culture, and traditional Chinese medicine. And productive service areas such as service outsourcing actively cultivate new competitive advantages to better promote economic transformation and upgrading and coordinated regional development.
The long-term trend of service trade has not changed
Since the beginning of this year, the new crown pneumonia epidemic has broken out globally, and service trade has been greatly affected. According to Xian Guoyi, in the first half of the year, the scale of China's service trade declined, but the overall trend was stabilizing, showing development resilience and vitality. Service exports performed significantly better than imports, and also better than other major service exporting countries, especially knowledge-intensive service exports. The growth rate of emerging services such as intellectual property royalties, insurance services, telecommunications, computers, and information services were all over 15%. The overall service export decline was 19.5 percentage points less than imports, which led to a 46.1% decline in the service trade deficit, a year-on-year decrease of 3440 100 million yuan.
"At present, the domestic epidemic prevention and control has achieved major strategic results, but the overseas epidemic is still spreading, the world economy is severely recessed, and international demand has shrunk significantly. The situation facing China's service trade development in the second half of the year is still severe and complicated." Xian Guoyi said, "but we also We must see that the epidemic will have a profound impact on the global service trade pattern, consumption patterns, and consumption habits. The development of service trade is organic and the competitiveness of China's service trade continues to improve. The long-term trend of improvement has not changed."
Xian Guoyi believes that this comprehensive deepening of the pilot program will bring at least three opportunities: First, market expansion opportunities, comprehensively expanding opening to promote the formation of a large market, and promoting the formation of a new development pattern with domestic and international cycles as the main body and mutual promotion of domestic and international cycles. Create a broader market space for the majority of domestic and foreign service providers; second, innovation and development opportunities, digital trade, copyright transactions, online education and other emerging service exports have become new growth points, and the producer service industry has adopted offshore outsourcing and bonded R&D and bonded Channels such as testing are more closely and more efficiently embedded in the global industrial chain supply chain, attracting domestic and foreign resource elements to be more fully invested in new business forms and new models; third is the opportunity for international cooperation. The pilot program provides more opportunities for China to deepen service trade cooperation with partners such as the “Belt and Road”. Broad space. "It can be said that the pilot will not only promote the high-quality development of China's service trade, but also inject new momentum into the development of global service trade." Xian Guoyi said.
Kong Dechen