China's service trade maintains rapid growth

China's service trade maintains rapid growth momentum with the country's consolidated power status in service trade, China Economic Times reported on Thursday.

In the first half of this year, China's total import and export of services reached 3.14 trillion yuan ($430 billion), up 8.5 percent year-on-year.

This growth rate is faster than the growth of trade in goods and outpaces the growth of trade in services among the world's major economies.

The reasons behind the rapid growth rate despite downward pressure in global economy are mainly the policies and measures taken by the Chinese government, said Li Jun, director of the institute of international trade in services under the Beijing-based Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.

On one hand, China has opened up its service industry and issued supporting policies for service trade in the past few years. The rapid growth is considered as a result of policy effects.

On the other hand, it is also closely related to the continuous liberalization of border control measures in China's travel field.

These measures include expanding group tour destinations; increasing air routes and flights; and driving cross-border tourism, study abroad and cross-border business activities.

In terms of structure, knowledge-intensive service trade grew rapidly, and its proportion continued to increase.

In the first half of this year, the import and export of knowledge-intensive services reached 1.36 trillion yuan, up 12.3 percent year-on-year, accounting for 43.5 percent of the total import and export of services, up 1.5 percentage points year-on-year.

Most of the knowledge-intensive services are digital deliverable services, indicating that the import and export of digital services is an important driving force for the development of service trade and is also the future development direction.

As an important way of service trade, service outsourcing has also maintained a sustained and stable growth trend and contributed to the overall growth of service trade.

In the long run, China's service trade power status continues to consolidate, with the traditional service trade still maintaining its dominant position, and trade in knowledge-intensive services continuing to grow.

Furthermore, pilot cities for innovative development of trade in services play a prominent role in promoting its development and the digital development of trade in services has been accelerated, according to Li.