Services sector gradually emerging as important engine driving nation's high-quality development

BEIJING — The services sector is becoming an increasingly crucial engine for China's economic growth and has substantial potential, driven by technological advancements such as artificial intelligence, said foreign representatives at the 2025 China International Fair for Trade in Services, held in Beijing from Wednesday to Sunday.

The fair featured high-level forums where government officials, industry leaders and international experts exchanged insights on the development of the services trade.

Services represent a great opportunity for growth in China as the scale of the domestic sector is still relatively small compared to other countries, Marshall Mills, senior resident representative in China of the International Monetary Fund, said on Thursday during the Forum on Development of Trade in Services.

Mills said total factor productivity growth in China's services sector has been accelerating, particularly in fields like financial services and commerce, playing a vital role in the country's continued economic development.

Tu Xinquan, dean of the China Institute for WTO Studies at the University of International Business and Economics, said that while China's services sector now accounts for over 50 percent of GDP, it remains below the 70 to 80 percent levels typical of developed economies.

"As the services sector expands, trade in services becomes a natural progression. Trade serves as a means to promote services sector growth, while industry expansion drives trade demand. Thus, industrial development and trade development mutually reinforce each other," Tu said, adding that expanded trade in services can boost domestic supply and stimulate consumption, which is a key growth driver for China.

Recent years have witnessed rapid growth in China's services trade, fueled by the country's sustained opening-up policies. A Ministry of Commerce report released on Thursday revealed that China's total services trade volume surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in 2024, ranking second globally.

"China's trade in services has entered a stage of high-quality development," Chinese Vice-Commerce Minister Sheng Qiuping said, adding that the country's services trade has maintained an average annual growth rate of 6.7 percent since 2012, 1.7 times that of its goods trade.

Digital transformation is accelerating this trend. Long Guoqiang, deputy head of the Development Research Center of the State Council, said that digitalization has transformed many services that were previously difficult to trade across borders into tradeable activities, accelerating the development of services trade across both traditional and emerging sectors.

In particular, the rapid development of AI is poised to open a new chapter for services trade, and this is an area where China maintains competitive advantages, Long said.

At CIFTIS, exhibitors showcased AI-powered solutions across multiple sectors, demonstrating technology's transformative impact on education, tourism, healthcare and sports. Chinese-made humanoid robots at the event exhibited capabilities like delivering food, preparing coffee, playing football and even taking part in boxing matches.

China's rapidly developing AI sector is empowering small and medium-sized enterprises to participate in global competition, Sheng said, adding that the proportion of knowledge-intensive service sector exports in China's overall export of services has increased rapidly in recent years.

Looking ahead, China will continue to expand its high-level opening-up, which will include the promotion of pilot programs in the fields of telecommunication and medicine, while steadily advancing opening-up in the education and culture sectors, Sheng said.

"We will deepen our integration into the world market, enhance industrial synergy with other countries, and inject greater momentum into global economic prosperity through opening-up and cooperation in the services trade," he said.