Booming service trade injects vitality into China's high-quality development

BEIJING -- Amid the rising trend of anti-globalization and trade protectionism, the 2024 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) signals China's firm commitment to high-quality development and opening up.

Covering areas such as telecommunications, computer and information services, financial services, and cultural and travel services, the CIFTIS attracted participants from more than 80 countries and international organizations to Beijing.

China's leading services in e-commerce, digital finance and the sharing economy have brought about remarkable changes in people's lives. Today, the country's emerging new quality productive forces are empowering the service trade.

Take the prevailing video game "Black Myth: Wukong" as an example. Through the combination of technology and culture, the blockbuster is sweeping the world, with sales exceeding 18 million copies so far, enchanting gamers with the unique mythology of China.

Meanwhile, digital-driven, smart and green growth of service trade is accelerating. New technologies as well as new business forms and models such as short videos and online literature provide consumers with an abundant array of choices.

Big data and computing power as well as zero-carbon and low-carbon technologies empower the integrated development of various industries in service trade. Digital cultural tourism, smart education, and smart sports are innovated to stimulate and expand the potential of service consumption.

During the past decade, the average annual growth rate of service trade stood at 6.2 percent in US dollar terms, higher than the global average and that of China's trade in goods over the same period. In 2023, the country's total import and export volume of services reached a record high of 6.6 trillion yuan ($927).

As an important field of service trade in China, travel service has seen rapid growth. In the first half of this year, China's travel service exports reached 103.7 billion yuan, up 131.9 percent year on year; travel service imports reached 858.1 billion yuan, up 41.5 percent year on year. Travel service trade accounted for 26.7 percent of China's overall service trade, 6.1 percentage points higher than the same period last year.

Early this month, China unveiled a set of guidelines to promote high-quality development of trade in services with high-standard opening up, which will accelerate the process of digital, intelligent and green development of trade in services in the country.

The guidelines called for promoting institutional opening up of trade in services, fully constructing the management system of the negative list for cross-border trade in services and improving the standardization level of service trade.