The latest data released by the Ministry of Commerce shows that from January to July, affected by factors such as the new crown pneumonia epidemic, my country's service trade declined, but service exports performed significantly better than imports, the trade deficit decreased, and the proportion of knowledge-intensive service trade increased.
Under the new situation, service trade has become a new support for stabilizing economic expectations.
Since 2012, my country's service trade has grown at an average annual rate of 7.8%, which is about 3.7% higher than the global growth rate.
In 2019, my country's import and export of services reached RMB 5.4153 billion, ranking second in the world in terms of scale.
At the same time, the structure of my country's service trade has been further optimized.
The proportion of knowledge-intensive service trade represented by computer information services and consulting services in the total amount increased from 27.3% in 2015 to 34.7% in 2019.
China is also an important pathfinder for the innovative development of global service trade.
In 2016, pilot projects for innovative development of service trade were deployed in 15 regions including Shanghai and Hainan. In 2018, it was decided to further deepen the pilot projects.
In August of this year, China decided to comprehensively deepen the pilot service trade innovation development and further enhance the status of "Chinese Services" in the global value chain.
The new round of pilot projects has been expanded from the original 17 pilot areas to 28. Half of the newly added pilot areas are in the old industrial bases in the Midwest and Northeast.
Focusing on promoting the reform, opening up and innovation of service trade, 122 specific measures have been proposed.
Experts said that from "developing" to "deepening" and now "all-round deepening", trade in services is gradually becoming another important growth point in China's economic development and transformation.
The person in charge of the Department of Trade in Services of the Ministry of Commerce said that the next step will be to further open up and speed up the formulation of the national negative list of cross-border trade in services.
Xian Guoyi, Director of the Department of Trade in Services of the Ministry of Commerce:
We are working on the negative list and internally demonstrate it because it covers a lot of fields. Our goal is to issue a national negative list of cross-border trade in services before the end of this year.
(CCTV reporter Liu Ying, Xu Ningning, Tang Zhijian)