China's service trade sector sees wider opening-up

A woman interacts with a service robot (R) during the 2020 China International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 6, 2020. [Xinhua/Ren Chao]

BEIJING -- China has taken a slew of measures to widen the opening up of the service industry and vows to make more efforts to promote the opening-up of trade in services to a higher-level.

The country has shortened the negative list for foreign investment for four consecutive years and released a negative list for cross-border trade in services at the Hainan free trade port, Vice Commerce Minister Wang Bingnan told a press conference Friday.

China has also made opening-up commitments in 22 more service fields by signing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement, said Wang.

The national comprehensive demonstration zone of service industry opening-up and the pilot free trade zone have been set up in Beijing, while four pilot zones for deepening opening-up in service trade have been added in Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing and Hainan, said Chen Chunjiang, an official with the Ministry of Commerce (MOC).

China's service trade has taken the lead in the world in restoring the growth trend thanks to the country's continuous efforts in promoting in-depth reform, high-level opening-up and all-round innovations since the beginning of the year, said Wang.

The country's imports and exports of services totaled 2.37 trillion yuan (about 365.4 billion U.S. dollars) in the first half of the year, up 6.7 percent year on year, generally rebounding to the level during the same period in 2019.

China has also formulated the 14th five-year plan on the development of service trade, which includes trade in digital services for the first time in line with the booming trend of digitalization of the sector, while emphasizing green transformation amid the country's bid to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality targets, Chen said.

Wang noted that the MOC will take measures to promote further opening-up of the sector in the next stage, such as facilitating the cross-border flow of capital, technology and personnel and compiling a national negative list for cross-border service trade.