China News Service, September 3rd. Xian Guoyi, Director of the Department of Trade in Services and Commercial Services of the Ministry of Commerce, introduced on September 3 that this year’s "Government Work Report" has proposed to introduce a negative list of cross-border service trade, which is China's promotion of service areas. An important exploration of institutional opening.

Currently, the Ministry of Commerce is working with relevant departments to study and formulate this list, which will be released before the end of the year.

　　The State Council Information Office held a press conference on September 3 to introduce the development of service trade and the progress of the preparations for the 2020 Service Trade Fair.

　　A reporter asked: What is the overall situation of service trade this year affected by the epidemic?

Over the years, China's trade in services has been showing a trend of deficit. Will this trend change in the next step?

How much effect will the FTS bring to this?

When is the cross-border service trade negative list expected to be launched?

　　According to Xian Guoyi, in the first seven months of this year, affected by the epidemic, the overall scale of China's service trade has declined, mainly due to travel.

However, China's service exports are obviously better than imports, and the overall service trade trend has stabilized in recent months.

There are three obvious characteristics:

　　First, the growth rate of service exports in July turned from negative to positive.

In July, China's service exports increased by 3.3%. This is the second time since the outbreak of the epidemic this month that exports have turned positive in the month.

China is also the only country in the world's major service trading countries that has increased since March.

　　Second, the deficit in trade in services has been substantially reduced.

In the first seven months, the decline in my country's service exports was 21.4 percentage points less than the decline in imports, driving the overall deficit to drop by 49.4% to 448.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 438.4 billion yuan.

　　The third is to further optimize the structure.

The import and export of knowledge-intensive services reached RMB 1.15 trillion, an increase of 8.9% against the trend, accounting for 44% of the total import and export of services, an increase of 9.7%, of which the export of knowledge-intensive services accounted for 56.2 of the total export. %.

　　Xian Guoyi said that at present, our national economy has entered an era dominated by the service industry, and the demand for services is very strong.

Reflected in the field of service trade, that is, the rapid growth of service imports.

In the past few years, there was a relatively large service deficit. Despite the deficit, our stance on expanding service imports and our determination to open up service trade remain unchanged.

　　Xian Guoyi pointed out that the theme of this service trade fair reflects our position.

In the future, we will continue to expand the opening up of the service sector and import more high-quality services. At the same time, we are also actively expanding service exports, pushing China's high-quality services to go global, and enhancing the international competitiveness of Chinese services.

It can also be seen from the trend of the deficit that since 2017, the growth rate of China's service exports has been consistently higher than the growth rate of imports. Last year, the service trade deficit was reduced, and the first 7 months of this year also saw a relatively substantial decrease.

This change is the market result of improving the competitiveness of China's service industry.

　　In response to the question of when the cross-border service trade negative list is expected to be launched, Xian Guoyi said that this year’s Government Work Report has proposed to introduce a cross-border service trade negative list, which is an important exploration of China to promote institutional opening up in the service sector.

Currently, the Ministry of Commerce is working with relevant departments to study and formulate this list, which will be released before the end of the year.