General

Since this year, global travel services have accelerated their recovery, transportation services have remained at a high level, and the scale of global service trade has been restored to the level before the COVID-19 epidemic. Among them, China's service trade performance is particularly impressive.

According to customs data, from January to October, China's service trade continued to grow, with a total service import and export of 4918.55 billion yuan, up 17.2% year on year. Among them, service exports reached 2358.15 billion yuan, up 18.1%; Service imports reached 2560.4 billion yuan, up 16.4%; The deficit is 202.26 billion yuan.

In this regard, Li Jun, director of the Institute of International Service Trade of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, said that the scale of China's service trade had recovered to the level of 2019 last year, and customs data showed that the first 10 months of this year still maintained a positive year-on-year growth of 17.2% on this basis. This fully shows that trade in services has become a new growth pole for China's foreign trade development, providing new impetus for foreign trade growth. It is estimated that the scale of China's service trade is expected to reach a record high of 900 billion US dollars this year.

Zheng Wei, associate researcher of China Service Outsourcing Research Center, also said that, on the whole, China's service trade continued to show a rapid growth trend in the first 10 months, and the quality of development was steadily improved, with a more balanced import and export structure. This is a vivid reflection of the diversified development of China's service trade.

The rapid growth of the import and export of knowledge intensive services is an important reason for the growth of China's service trade. According to customs data, from January to October, China's import and export of knowledge intensive services reached 2047.8 billion yuan, up 10.3%. Among them, the export of knowledge intensive services was 1149.92 billion yuan, up 14.3%; The areas with rapid export growth were intellectual property royalties, telecommunications computers and information services, with growth rates of 17.3% and 16.3% respectively. The import of knowledge intensive services was 897.88 billion yuan, up 5.6%; The area with rapid import growth is insurance services, with a growth rate of 57.1%.

"In the context of the epidemic, global trade in services is moving towards the digital direction. The digital transformation of trade in services is a general trend. In China, knowledge intensive services have shown outstanding performance, especially the rapid growth of digital service trade." Li Jun analyzed that, "This is because the knowledge intensive industry has a strong ability to resist the impact of the epidemic, and the proportion of online communication and interaction is high, so it has maintained a rapid growth. It can be seen that knowledge intensive services are a stabilizer of China's service trade development, and play a very important role in maintaining the stable development of service trade under the epidemic situation."

Zheng Wei also said that the growth momentum of knowledge intensive service trade has not diminished, accounting for more than 40% of the total import and export of services. It is an important force to promote the high-quality and innovative development of China's service trade. He particularly mentioned that from the perspective of exports, the export of knowledge intensive services from January to October has reached nearly half of China's total service exports. Among them, the export growth of intellectual property royalties, telecommunications and computer and information service sectors is fast, which indicates that China's high-tech service industry is showing innovative development results and has certain international comparative advantages. From the perspective of imports, the proportion of high-quality service imports, represented by knowledge intensive service imports and foreign investment in high-tech service industries, has been rising, which deeply reflects the further optimization of China's service import structure.

"As China's opening up in the financial sector continues to increase, the import of insurance services continues to grow rapidly. From January to October, the import of insurance services increased by nearly 60% year on year, with gratifying results. It is believed that as China's service trade continues to expand and open up, more and more international high-quality services will enter the Chinese market." Zheng Wei said.

In addition to knowledge intensive services, since this year, travel service trade has also shown a trend of recovery, driving China's service trade to achieve rapid growth. According to customs data, from January to October, China's import and export of travel services reached 689.06 billion yuan, up 9.1%.

With the gradual weakening of the impact of the epidemic, trade in travel services has huge room for growth. "It is believed that travel, as the largest service trade sector in China, will rebound rapidly, thus driving the overall service trade volume to achieve a significant increase." Zheng Wei said so.

According to customs data, excluding travel service trade, from January to October, China's service imports and exports increased by 18.6%, including 19% for exports and 18.1% for imports; Compared with the same period in 2019, service import and export increased by 51.7%, including 66.7% for export and 36.9% for import.

Looking ahead, Li Jun is optimistic about the development of China's service trade. In his view, opportunities and challenges coexist in the development of China's service trade. In terms of opportunities, China's service trade will still maintain a rapid growth rate next year, especially the travel service trade. With the relaxation of the international border travel policy, travel services will enjoy a rapid recovery and growth. In addition, trade in knowledge intensive services will continue to grow rapidly.

In terms of challenges, the prospects for global economic growth next year are bleak, external demand is insufficient, and the trend of the COVID-19 is not very clear. In addition, the crisis in Ukraine, the decoupling and disconnection of the United States, etc. will affect the development of China's service trade. To this end, the next step should be to thoroughly implement the spirit of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, promote the institutional opening of rules, regulations, management and standards in the field of trade in services, innovate the development mechanism of trade in services, promote the development of digital trade, strengthen the statistical monitoring of trade in services, improve the ability to prevent risks in trade in services, and help build a trade power.