Bright spot in a grim and gloomy picture: China Daily editorial

Considering the grim global situation because of the novel coronavirus outbreak, China's services trade performance so far this year has been impressive.

In the first five months of this year, the country's services trade deficit, which includes fields such as business, financial, travel, entertainment and education, narrowed by 285.15 billion yuan ($41.1 billion) year-on-year to 350.08 billion yuan.

Last year, the value of China's imports and exports of services reached $785 billion, the world's second highest, making China a major contributor to the global development of the trade in services.

Globally, trade in services has grown at a fast pace and it accounts for an increasingly larger proportion of total trade. Services now account for 20 percent of total global trade, up from 7 percent in 1970, and it is predicted that services could account for about 33 percent of global trade by 2040.

But facing the challenges posed by the pandemic and trade protectionism, the world's major trading powers need to work together to reduce their differences and work out solutions to continue to promote free trade.

On China's part, it has organized various trade platforms, such as the China International Import Expo and the China Import and Export Fair (Canton Fair), to facilitate trade exchanges despite the global trade headwinds.

The country will host this year's China International Fair for Trade in Services in September. The fair has become a major platform for promoting the global trade in services and played a major role in global trade and investment facilitation.

China's trade in services has helped the country ward off the trade shocks caused by the global public health crisis and trade protectionism. It also caters to China's efforts to upgrade its economic structure and pursue high-quality development.

Since it is highly related to the services industry and has high value added, the development of the trade in services accompanies a country's economic upgrading; therefore, trade in services is deemed to be a major barometer of a country's level of modernization.

In this sense, the fast development of its trade in services in recent years reflects China's continuous economic upgrading.

Chinese policymakers recognize the importance of the service sector and they are advancing reforms to encourage greater private participation and investment in services and opening up more areas to foreign investment.

The fast development of China's services trade therefore bears significance for overall global trade development, especially at a time when global trade activities have been greatly reduced by the spread of the novel coronavirus and the rise of anti-globalization sentiment in some developed countries.