[Guangming Forum]

The latest data from the Ministry of Commerce shows that China's total service import and export volume increased by 14.4% year-on-year to 7.5 trillion yuan, breaking the trillion dollar mark for the first time. Against the backdrop of the tortuous progress of the global economy, my country's service trade has reached a new level, reflecting the market's firm confidence in China's development, demonstrating the strong resilience and huge development potential of China's economy, and is a powerful footnote to the improvement of China's economic global competitiveness.

The service trade has reached a new level is an important symbol of my country's economic transformation and upgrading. From a domestic perspective, under the guidance of high-quality development, "China's service" and "Service China" have accelerated their development. my country's service trade scale ranks second in the world for many years, promoting more diversified economic momentum and more comprehensive competitiveness. From a global perspective, my country is accelerating its upgrade from a "world factory" to a "service solution provider" and climbing to the high-end of the global value chain. Chinese services are expected to create a second growth curve under the advantage of "world factory", achieving mutual empowerment and coordinated improvement of Chinese manufacturing and Chinese services.

Behind the rapid development of service trade is the market's recognition and confidence in the Chinese economy. Service trade has reached a new level, indicating that China's service trade market has huge potential, which will attract more multinational companies to increase their investment in the Chinese service market, and will also encourage Chinese service companies to expand overseas markets more actively, and promote the further expansion and quality of China's service trade with a stronger "two-way" trend. At the same time, China's service trade has reached a new level, which also means that the market will usher in more investment hotspots and growth points. Key areas such as information technology services and cultural creativity are expected to attract more capital inflows, accelerate the promotion of service trade to become a butterfly, and ordinary people will be able to enjoy various high-quality services from the world more conveniently.

On the one hand, my country's huge manufacturing foundation contains a large number of productive service needs. Under the trend of more refined division of labor, the "Chinese services" hidden behind Chinese manufacturing in the past will be further separated, realizing independent professional and large-scale development, and integrating more productive services into the manufacturing links will catalyze the formation of more new service trade needs. On the other hand, the scale of China's middle-income group continues to expand, and the improvement of residents' consumption capacity and consumption upgrading will create strong demand for high-quality life services. In 2024, the proportion of per capita service consumption expenditure for residents will be 46.1%. Judging from international experience, there is huge potential for service consumption demand.

At present, the development of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things is promoting the digitalization and intelligent transformation of service trade and creating more new business models and service formats. my country's super-large-scale market advantages will provide rich application scenarios for these innovations and creations, and is expected to lead the innovation diffusion path of global service trade. Taking online education as an example, relevant data show that as of December 2024, the number of online education users in my country reached 355 million, and the number of MOOCs online exceeded 76,800, ranking first in the world in construction and application scale. The rise of online education in my country is changing the global online education landscape and will also provide global learners with richer educational resources.

In August 2024, the State Council issued the "Opinions on Promoting the High-Quality Development of Service Trade with High-level Openness", which put forward 20 tasks and measures around institutional opening up, cultivating new business forms and new models, and international cooperation, aiming to provide a better development environment for service trade, support enterprises to continuously explore new models and mechanisms for service trade, and improve the global competitiveness of "China's services". China is also actively participating in international service trade cooperation, expanding the international service trade market through multilateral and bilateral mechanisms, providing an important platform and strategic support for the development of service trade.

The service trade has exceeded the trillion-dollar mark and is the starting point of the new journey. Standing at a new starting point, we must base ourselves on the strategic height of the economy of a major country, further plan and improve the top-level design of the development of service economy and service trade, adhere to reform-led and innovation-driven, and continuously improve the level of service trade development. In the short term, we must make good use of China's comprehensive economic advantages, steadily respond to the multiple impacts of the external environment, and continue to promote the expansion of the scale and quality improvement of service trade; in the medium and long term, we must enhance the voice of global rule-making and establish the global brand of "China Service".

Facing the 15th Five-Year Plan period, first, we will connect with high-standard international rules, adhere to the idea of ​​relaxing access and improving domestic regulations, further deepen the institutional opening up of service trade, actively participate in the formulation of international rules and standards, and improve the level of service trade governance. The second is to promote the coordinated improvement of China's manufacturing and "China Service", promote the digital transformation of service trade, cultivate and strengthen new service trade, use free trade zones, comprehensive pilot demonstrations for expanding opening up, and international consumption center cities as platforms to expand high-quality service exports, cultivate globally competitive service suppliers and brands, and encourage central enterprises to integrate resources to create "China Services" integrated suppliers. The third is to deepen international cooperation in service trade, strengthen service trade and digital trade cooperation between countries jointly built the "Belt and Road" countries, strengthen strategic layout for emerging markets, improve the service trade promotion system, and improve the service level of overseas institutions. Fourth, strengthen the guarantee of the development factors of service trade, increase support for service trade financing and insurance, strengthen the construction of service trade disciplines, think tanks and talent teams, and create conditions to attract senior talents in the service industry to work in China. Fifth, continue to improve the risk prevention and control system, establish a full-scope service trade statistics and monitoring platform, establish and improve service trade risk warning and emergency response mechanisms, and ensure that the development of service trade is steady and long-term.

(Author: Huang Weiting, deputy director of the Decision-making Consulting Department of the Macroeconomic Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission)