General

As a new highland for the development of China's service trade, with the blessing of RCEP and other favorable factors, Hainan Province's performance has become more and more dazzling.

Recently, Hainan Province has released a report card: From January to May, the import and export volume of services between Hainan Province and RCEP member countries was 2.701 billion yuan, accounting for 21.64% of the total import and export value of services in Hainan Province, and the cooperation area achieved RCEP member countries. Full coverage, the trade areas are mainly concentrated in travel, transportation, commerce, computers, processing and manufacturing, and intellectual property rights.

This is a microcosm of China's service trade development in the first half of the year, which still showed strong resilience and maintained a steady growth despite the unfavorable factors such as frequent epidemics at home and abroad.

At the press conference held by the Ministry of Commerce a few days ago, Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Shu Jueting introduced that from January to May, China's service trade continued to maintain steady growth, with a total import and export of services of 2,365.36 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22%. Among them, service exports were 1,151.79 billion yuan, an increase of 26.3%; imports were 1,213.57 billion yuan, an increase of 18.2%. The growth of service exports was 8.1 percentage points higher than that of imports, driving the service trade deficit down by 46% to 61.78 billion yuan.

"From January to May, China's service exports and imports both maintained double-digit growth, especially the strong momentum of service exports, which has increasingly become an important force for China to create new advantages in foreign trade." Zheng Wei, associate researcher at China Service Outsourcing Research Center, said that this year Since then, under the repeated pressure of the new crown pneumonia epidemic at home and abroad, China's service trade has been able to maintain stable growth, which is due to the combination of multiple factors such as the government's bail-out policy, the continuous increase in opening up, the accelerated upgrading of the industrial structure, and the high-quality development of the service industry. the result of.

Zheng Wei predicted, "Due to the uncertainty caused by the repeated epidemics and other unfavorable factors, the development of China's trade in services is still facing great challenges. In the second half of this year, it is expected that China's trade in services will continue to maintain a growth trend, and the deficit in trade in services is expected to further narrow. The export structure is more balanced.”

Steady growth with bright spots

In the steady growth, the development of China's service trade has also shown many bright spots.

According to the data of the Ministry of Commerce, from January to May, China's import and export of knowledge-intensive services was 988.67 billion yuan, an increase of 10%. Among them, the export of knowledge-intensive services was 560.24 billion yuan, an increase of 13.6%. The areas with faster export growth were telecommunications, computer and information services, and other business services, which increased by 18.5% and 13.2% respectively. The import of knowledge-intensive services was 428.43 billion yuan, an increase of 5.6%, and the area with faster import growth was insurance services, with a growth rate of 74.2%.

"This shows that after years of structural adjustment, transformation, and innovation, China's service trade has entered a high-quality development track, and there are obvious signs of some service industries shifting to the mid-to-high end of the global value chain." Zheng Wei analyzed.

As one of the important components of trade in services, travel services continue to show a recovery momentum. Data show that from January to May, China's import and export of travel services reached 330.84 billion yuan, an increase of 7.7%.

In this regard, Zheng Wei said that since the beginning of this year, some countries have relaxed in terms of epidemic control, and China's travel service imports and exports have shown obvious signs of recovery, which have continued to maintain a positive growth range. If the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic gradually weakens, the strong growth of China's travel service imports and exports will become a high probability event.

Excluding travel services, from January to May, China's import and export of services increased by 24.7%. Among them, exports increased by 28.1%, imports increased by 20.8%; compared with the same period in 2019, imports and exports of services increased by 49%, exports increased by 65.2%, and imports increased by 32.8%.

The second half of the year continued the positive trend

Looking forward to the second half of the year, Zheng Wei believes that, driven by five positive factors, China's service trade is expected to continue to grow and make positive contributions to stabilizing foreign trade.

First, the trade volume of emerging service industries and knowledge- and technology-intensive service industries will further increase. Driven by the rapid development of the digital economy, digital trade, especially digital service exports, is expected to become an important force in promoting the high-quality development of China's service trade.

Second, driven by the favorable RCEP, the service trade between China and countries in the region is expected to be greatly expanded. At the same time, the potential of service trade cooperation between China and the countries along the “Belt and Road”, emerging market countries and developing countries will be further released, and service trade partners will become increasingly diversified.

The third is that China will continue to increase its opening-up in the field of service trade. This year, it is expected to release the national version and the free trade pilot zone version of the negative list for cross-border service trade, which will promote the three modes of cross-border delivery, overseas consumption and natural person movement on a larger scale. accelerated development of trade in services.

Fourth, with the continuous deepening of the construction of open platforms such as the innovative development pilot of service trade, the comprehensive pilot of the expansion and opening of the service industry, the national characteristic service export base, and China's service outsourcing demonstration city, the service trade in various regions is expected to present a development pattern that is both synergistic and distinctive. .

Fifth, the 2022 China International Fair for Trade in Services will be held in September, continuing to build a platform for global service providers to display, communicate, cooperate and share. The current service trade will inject a shot in the arm into the weak and turbulent world economy, and contribute "China's strength" to the international community to strengthen cooperation in the field of services.