(Economic Watch) How does trade in services rewrite the global economic landscape?

　　China News Agency, Beijing, September 2 (Reporter Li Xiaoyu) The service trade is just like the sky.

This promising field not only contains new impetus for economic recovery, but also one of the key points of economic competition among countries in the future.

　　At a forum held during the 2022 Service Trade Fair, Wang Shouwen, an international trade negotiator and deputy minister of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, said that although the epidemic has affected the development of some specific categories of cross-border service trade, it has also spawned a large number of new technologies and new Business formats, new scenarios, and new models have stimulated new vitality and potential for service trade, and the service industry and service trade have become increasingly important in the value chain of the global industrial chain.

　　According to WTO data, the service industry has become a pillar industry of the global economy.

Two-thirds of employment in developing countries comes from the service industry, and four-fifths of employment income in developed countries comes from the service industry.

　　Wang Anshun, deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council of China, also said that in recent years, the overall development of trade in services has been faster than that of trade in goods. It has become a new driving force for global economic growth, and its role in promoting industrial development has become more prominent.

　　Wang Anshun believes that there are several new trends in the current development of service trade: the accelerated integration of manufacturing and services, the servitization of manufacturing has become an important driving force for the upgrading of the value chain, the traditional industrial layout and division of labor have been broken; the trade structure has rapidly expanded to high-end services, The impact on the global trade pattern is becoming more and more profound; more emphasis is placed on openness, inclusiveness and cooperation, which is conducive to the smooth integration of developing countries and small and medium-sized service providers into the global value chain.

　　According to the observation of Knudsen, Deputy Secretary-General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), although some individual barriers have emerged, such as some countries have begun to implement stricter security checks on foreign investment, from a global perspective, trade in services has been restricted in recent years. gradually decreases.

This trend helps drive lower trade costs and facilitate the flow of various factors across borders.

　　Knudsen said that when the global supply chain is facing various pressures from transportation, logistics and communication, accelerating the development of service trade can enhance the resilience of the industrial chain and supply chain, and play an important role in reducing the impact of the epidemic and promoting economic recovery.

　　Among the various formats and modes of service trade, the digital economy and digital trade are the most promising.

　　Sheng Qiuping, Vice Minister of Commerce of China, said that the current rapid development of the digital economy, the wide range of radiation, and the unprecedented depth of impact are becoming a key point in reshaping the global economic structure and changing the global competition pattern.

　　Jiang Xiaojuan, member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and vice-chairman of the Social Construction Committee, said that according to data analysis by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, digital multinationals are growing significantly faster than traditional multinationals, and are becoming a dominant force in changing the global trade and investment landscape.

　　In recent years, China's e-commerce has developed rapidly.

According to official statistics, last year, China's e-commerce transaction volume reached 42.3 trillion yuan (RMB, the same below), a year-on-year increase of 19.6%; online retail sales reached 13.09 trillion yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of 14.1%.

Chinese e-commerce ranks first in the world in terms of online retail sales, online shoppers, and mobile search scale.

China has become the world's largest cross-border e-commerce retail export economy. Last year, the total import and export of cross-border e-commerce was close to 2 trillion yuan.

　　Jiang Xiaojuan reminded that although China's digital economy and digital trade are developing rapidly, compared with other countries, the proportion of overseas revenue of Chinese digital enterprises is still low, and the degree of internationalization is not high enough.

In the future, China should encourage platforms to integrate resources, provide a new model for the integrated development of the whole chain of cross-border trade in goods and services, and embed important services in the whole chain to enhance the competitiveness of enterprises.

At the same time, more localities and enterprises should be allowed to pilot data flow across borders, and under the premise of ensuring security and privacy, they should meet the requirements for data flow in the development of all-round cross-border e-commerce.

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