Chengdu boosting efforts for trade in services sector

Chengdu, the capital city of Southwest China's Sichuan province, is ramping up efforts to bolster development of the trade in services sector to push forward high-quality development in the region.

In contrast to commodity trade, trade in services refers to the sale and delivery of intangible services such as transportation, finance, tourism, telecommunications, construction, advertising, human resources and intellectual property.

So far, Chengdu has established five national export bases focusing on digital services, cultural products, IP services, human resources services and language services to inject vitality into the trade in services industry.

In the first half of 2022, the import and export volume of trade in services in Chengdu increased 24.97 percent year-on-year. The export volume of trade in services of the city increased 47.04 percent year-on-year. Its digital products import and export volume increased 20 percent from the previous year and the import and export volume of IP royalties increased 101.37 percent.

Local officials said the establishment of the five platforms played an irreplaceable role in promoting the development of Chengdu's trade in services sector.

The Ministry of Commerce further certified 40 national professional service export bases in March to support the export of four types of services. They are human resources, geographical information, language and IP services.

The Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone, also known as CDHT, was recognized as a professional IP service export base. The Chengdu Human Resources Service Industrial Park and Sichuan Lan-Bridge Information Technology was recognized as a professional human resources service export base and a professional language service export base, respectively.

Officials from the commerce bureau of Chengdu said the development of professional service export bases will help the trade in services industry of the city to develop toward larger-scale and more intensive operations.

Companies with strong competitiveness, market influence and innovation capacity will benefit from those platforms. They will also bolster the overall performance and strength of the trade in services industry of Chengdu.

Supported by the Chengdu government, trade in service enterprises are attaching greater attention to new products development and innovation to maintain sustainable development.

Lan-Bridge is one of the pioneer language service providers with more than 20 years of experience in Chengdu. Its translators are located in 20 offices around the world, who can provide translation services in more than 80 languages between 200-plus language pairs to meet the demand of clients, according to the company. In 2021, Lan-Bridge recorded more than 4 million yuan ($573,000) in income from the export of translation services.

The company has been actively embracing emerging opportunities and has independently developed a machine translation and human editing system, a multilingual corpus management system and a project-based learning for translation system to serve the changing market demand.

During the 2022 China International Fair for Trade in Services, held in Beijing from Aug 31 to Sept 5, performances of Konghou, a traditional Chinese plucked string instrument, presented by Shuyue Jiayin Cultural Technology, attracted significant attention from visitors.

According to the company from Chengdu Three Kingdoms Creative Park, Sichuan province, the Shu Kingdom (221-263) in ancient China boasted rich cultural and art resources. Shuyue Jiayin is keen to include Sichuan's cultural elements in music instrument design or branding to support regional cultural development.

In May this year, the Chengdu Human Resources Service Industrial Park invited 13 human resources service providers including Risfond and OPT to form the nonofficial alliance named the West Headhunting Valley Alliance. The alliance will support Chengdu in constructing the China West Headhunting Valley, which will feature more than 100 influential human resources service providers and more than 30,000 professionals in the CDHT.

"We will develop an operation mechanism that is overseen by the government, adapted to commercialized operations, and in which enterprises and all sectors of society participate, to develop a high-end and innovative headhunting center in western China," a representative from Risfond said.

From left: The Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone, also known as the CDHT, has become one of the national intellectual property service export bases in 2022. The Fin-Tech Building in the CDHT boasts many leading businesses. The Chengdu Human Resources Service Industrial Park supports the CDHT to achieve bigger goals in human resources service exports. CHINA DAILY

The Tianfu Software Park within the Chengdu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone plays a key role in supporting the trade in services sector development in Chengdu. CHINA DAILY