Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, September 4 -
Topic: the face of the impact of the epidemic, how to revive trade in services engine?
Xinhua News Agency reporters Sun Nan, Wei Yukun, Guo Yujing
Affected by the epidemic, global cross-border investment will fall by more than 40% in 2020, and service trade will also be hit hard.
How to revive the service trade, the engine that supports the global economic recovery?
What are the new trends in future development?
"The more difficult the time, the more confidence must be strengthened; the more severe the epidemic, the more cooperation must be strengthened. The opening up of the service industry and the development of service trade are important ways for countries to integrate into economic globalization and participate in international competition and cooperation."
Ma Jiantang, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group of the Development Research Center of the State Council, said on the 3rd at one of the series of summit forums of the China International Trade in Services Fair in 2021, the "New Trends in Service Trade Open Development Summit Forum".
Service trade is an important part of international trade and an important field of international economic and trade cooperation, and plays an important role in building a new development pattern.
To cope with the challenge of the epidemic and to revive the development of the service industry, the key is to strengthen confidence.
How important is "China Service" to the world?
Yu Jianhua, the international trade negotiator and deputy minister of the Ministry of Commerce, revealed a set of data at the forum:
In 2020, China’s imports and exports of services were US$661.7 billion, ranking second in the world for 7 consecutive years. In the past 10 years, China has imported more than US$4 trillion in services from the world, contributing 24% of the world’s service imports growth. Trading partners added approximately 19 million jobs.
Former Deputy Director-General of the World Trade Organization Yi Xiaozhun further pointed out that China's service trade exports accounted for the proportion of world service trade exports, which has increased from 3% in 2005 to 6% in 2020; service trade imports accounted for world service trade imports. The proportion has increased from 3.3% in 2005 to 8% in 2020.
"We should see the huge potential for the development of service trade." Ma Jiantang analyzed that in the past 10 years, the average growth rate of global service trade has been twice that of goods trade, and its share and position in international trade have steadily increased. The World Trade Organization It is predicted that the proportion of service trade will continue to increase in the future, from the current 22% to over 33% in 2040.
To cope with the challenge of the epidemic and revitalize the development of the service industry, the key is to be able to capture new trends.
"Digital empowerment, gathering new impetus", "technology empowerment, activating new engines", "rule empowerment, expanding new space"-Yu Jianhua believes that "three empowerments" are new trends and new features in the development of service trade.
Yu Jianhua said that since the outbreak of the epidemic, more and more services have been transferred from offline to online, and the digital application scenarios of service trade have been significantly expanded and the process has been accelerating; service trade has continued to be upgraded to intelligent and networked; new service trade The rules pay more attention to the openness of the service industry and the free flow of data, more attention to the development space of cross-border services and digital trade, and more attention to the liberalization of high-level service trade based on the negative list. The high standards and strong constraints of service trade are further highlighted.
Ma Jiantang suggested that all countries in the world should fully understand the importance of developing service trade, and continue to promote the open development of service trade under the premise of precise prevention and control of the epidemic; it is necessary to seize the new round of information technology revolution and new opportunities of industrial transformation in a timely manner, and jointly promote Global digital transformation will continue to optimize the institutional environment for the development of digital trade, and jointly promote the innovative development and open cooperation of digital trade.
The forum was co-sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce, the Development Research Center of the State Council, and the Beijing Municipal People's Government. During this period, relevant parties also released the "China Service Trade Development Report 2020" and "Digital Trade Development and Cooperation Report 2021".