General

According to the observation report of Huacheng Import and Export Data, Hainan's service trade has maintained rapid growth since 2022, with highlights in many fields. Statistics show that in the first 11 months of 2022, Hainan's service import and export reached 31.837 billion yuan, up 26.54% year on year, marking the first time that Hainan's annual service import and export exceeded 30 billion yuan. Gan Lu, a researcher of the Silk Road Research Institute (Haikou), said in an interview with the reporter of the China Economic Times that the service trade of Hainan Free Trade Port is entering a "golden development period". Looking forward to 2023, the service trade of Hainan Free Trade Port will present three major trends.

First, Hainan's service trade will expand steadily and maintain a rapid growth trend. On the one hand, Hainan has issued the country's first negative list of cross-border service trade and the country's shortest negative list of foreign investment access. With the gradual release of the policy effect of the free trade port and the promotion of high-level institutional opening of the service industry, it will drive the rapid development of Hainan's service trade; On the other hand, with the relaxation of the epidemic control policy and the entry and exit management policy in China, the traditional service trade generated by the natural person movement, overseas consumption and other modes that were originally affected by the epidemic will have a restorative growth, which will drive the growth of the scale of Hainan's service trade. According to the observation of Huacheng's import and export data, from January to November 2022, Hainan's import and export of tourism services will reach 2.087 billion yuan, up 5.77% year on year. It is expected that Hainan's tourism service trade will further recover in 2023.

Second, the internal structure of Hainan's service trade has been continuously optimized, and the proportion of knowledge-intensive service trade will continue to rise, becoming an important force supporting the development of Hainan's service trade. In 2021, Hainan Telecom's computer and information services, other commercial services, and intellectual property royalties accounted for 31%, 13.7%, and 13.4% of the total import and export of services, respectively, ranking first, third, and fourth in the import and export of services. Together, the three accounted for half of the service trade. With the rapid growth of Hainan's new offshore international trade business, Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation reported that in the first 11 months of 2022, the import and export of Hainan's commercial services reached 12.646 billion yuan, up 4.27 times year-on-year. It is expected that Hainan's knowledge-intensive service trade will continue to maintain a strong development trend in 2023. It is suggested to further simplify the negative list of foreign investment access in knowledge-intensive service industries, lower the market access threshold, and promote cross-border flow of production factors such as technology, knowledge, data, etc.

Third, the deep integration of digital trade and service trade is the trend of the times. There is great potential to develop digital service trade in Hainan. Hainan has the conditions to develop digital service trade: first, the flow of data is the basic condition to develop digital service trade, and Hainan Free Trade Port has the institutional arrangement for the safe and orderly flow of data. Second, China is applying to join the CPTPP and DEPA, and supports the Hainan Free Trade Port to do a stress test on the docking of high-level international economic and trade rules, of which the docking of digital trade rules is an important content. Third, Hainan's services-led economic structure and the rapid development of service trade have provided important industrial support for the development of digital service trade.

"In the new stage of development, Hainan has the conditions to take service trade as the leading factor, accelerate the high-level two-way opening of the service industry market, and create an important intersection of smooth international and domestic double circulation. There is still much room for improvement in the development level of Hainan's service industry and service trade flow. In the next five years, accelerating the expansion of the flow scale and gradually improving the quality of the stock is an important task for the development of Hainan's service industry and service trade In terms of the innovative development of service trade in Hainan Free Trade Port, we should explore and try international high standard economic and trade rules such as CPTPP and DEPA first, and accelerate the institutional opening of rules, regulations, management and standards. For example, study the dynamic adjustment mechanism of Hainan's cross-border service trade as soon as possible. " Xia Feng, a researcher at Hainan University, said that Huacheng's import and export data were observed and reported.

Xia Feng suggested that Hainan Free Trade Port should focus on "three articles on overseas consumption return" to accelerate the innovative development of service trade. Relying on the large domestic demand market of 1.4 billion people, relying on the opening policy of the free trade port, Hainan has accelerated the creation of three major brands of duty-free shopping, international medical care and "studying in Hainan" to undertake the return of overseas consumption, so that Chinese people can enjoy international tourism services and products in Hainan without going abroad. The construction of Hainan International Tourism Consumption Center is connected with the demand for service-oriented products at one end and the supply of service-oriented products at the other. The key to building an international tourism consumption center with world influence is to adapt to the general trend of upgrading the consumption structure and emerging new types of consumption, take optimizing and strengthening the duty-free shopping industry in the outlying islands as the starting point, deepen the supply-side structural reform, accelerate the release of the duty-free policy dividend in the outlying islands of Hainan, and strive to become the largest duty-free shopping market in the world in the next 3-5 years, Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.