In the first half of this year, China's total trade in services exceeded 2.6 tn

According to data released by the Ministry of Commerce recently, China's total trade in services reached 2612.46 billion yuan in the first half of the year, an increase of 2.6% over the previous year. Among them, exports amounted to 933.37 billion yuan, an increase of 9%; imports amounted to 1679.08 billion yuan, a decrease of 0.6%; and deficits amounted to 745.71 billion yuan, a decrease of 10.5%. In the first half of this year, China's service industry has achieved rapid growth, which has promoted the steady growth of service trade. What is the development potential of China's service trade? Will the deficit continue to narrow in the future? The reporter interviewed relevant experts.

"In the first half of this year, the total export volume of our related software services has nearly doubled. Increasing R&D and market investment have increased the popularity and repurchase rate of China's digital office solutions in Southeast Asian countries. Jinshan office WPS has 80 million overseas monthly live users, with significant growth in India and emerging markets in Southeast Asia, according to Gekko, Chief Executive Officer of Jinshan Office.

In the first half of this year, China's service trade accounted for 15.1% of the total foreign trade, 0.5 percentage points higher than last year's. Where is the power behind it? From 2005 to 2017, the proportion of world service trade in total trade increased from 20.66% to 23.69%.

Look at China, the endogenous motive force of the development of service trade is accumulating constantly. The industrial base of service industry has been growing. In the first half of the year, China's service industry added value was 24.8 trillion yuan, accounting for about 55% of GDP, which was about 3 percentage points higher than that in 2018. The same growth rate of 7.0% of service industry added value was still higher than that of 6.3% of GDP. Policy dividends continued to be released. "In recent years, the state has issued a series of policies and measures, deployed and carried out pilot projects for innovative development of trade in services, created a good environment for development of trade in services, and promoted the level of trade facilitation, so as to effectively promote the development of trade in services." Gao Lingyun, a researcher at the Institute of World Economy and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said. It should also be noted that the proportion of trade in services in China's foreign trade structure is still lower than the world average. What is the potential for development?

"China's economy has accelerated to upgrade to the service economy, the proportion of service industry has increased continuously, the TradeAbility of services has increased substantially, the pace of opening up of service industry has accelerated and the related policy effects have emerged, and the proportion of service trade has a large space to rise and broad prospects." Li Aimin, Minister of Service Economy Research of China Service Outsourcing Research Center, said. Gao Lingyun believes that the development system should be improved to provide institutional guarantee for the opening of service industry; further relax market access for service trade and improve the level of internationalization of service industry; promote the innovation of service trade mode, attach importance to the application of new technology achievements represented by digital technology; attach importance to the protection of intellectual property rights and give full play to market players. Enthusiasm.

Service trade deficit in the first half of the year will decrease by 87.49 billion yuan, export will continue to be faster than import, the growth rate is 9.6 percentage points higher than import. What is the reason for the narrowing of the deficit? In addition to the contribution of traditional services such as transportation, maintenance and maintenance services to the growth, the growth rates of intellectual property rights, financial services, personal, cultural and entertainment services exceeded the average, reaching 33%, 13.9% and 9.45% respectively. Luo Libin, deputy dean of the School of Economics, Beijing Second Foreign Languages Institute, analyzed that Knowledge-intensive Services have become an important factor driving the growth of service exports, and offshore service outsourcing has continued to play an important role as an engine. In recent years, the proportion of offshore service outsourcing in emerging services exports has been around 70%, and its implementation amount in the first half of the year reached 24.47 billion yuan, a steady growth.The decrease of service import in the first half of the year was mainly due to the decrease of 39.389 billion yuan in travel service import, a large extent. In recent years, the slowdown in the growth rate of imports of travel services has led to a slowdown in the overall growth rate of imports of services. In 2018, the growth rate was 6.4%, while in the first half of this year, it was 4.36% lower than that of the previous year. China Tourism Research Institute predicts that the compound annual growth rate of outbound tourism market will be about 5% in the next five years. Will China continue to narrow its trade deficit in services in the future?

Luo Libin believes that, on the one hand, with China's travel service imports turning from super-high to medium-high-speed growth, the trend may become normal, even if imports in other service areas will continue to grow, but service imports will not maintain the high-speed growth before 2016; on the other hand, service outsourcing will be issued for a considerable period of time. Give full play to the comparative advantages of China's service exports, and the domestic service market may work with service outsourcing to promote the growth of service exports. It can be predicted that the growth rate of China's service exports will not change in the next few years when it is higher than that of imports. At the same time, it should be emphasized that this can only explain the slowdown of the expansion of the service trade deficit, and does not mean that the deficit will certainly narrow. The absolute narrowing of the deficit in the first half of this year may be affected by many factors. Luo Libin said.

"In the first half of the year, the proportion of the company's digital business continued to increase, the market share of foreign trade expanded, the performance remained stable, and the quality continued to grow rapidly." Zhang Dongwei, senior vice president of IT solution service provider Wen Sihai Hui, said that technological innovation is the core driving force to do a good job in service trade. Domestic enterprises concerned should insist on sinking to the bottom technology, implement the global layout strategy and better exploit the market. At present, more and more enterprises in China have made great achievements in knowledge-intensive service trade, such as telecommunications, computer, artificial intelligence and industrial Internet of Things. In the first half of the year, the import and export volume of Knowledge-intensive Services reached 89.23 billion yuan.