BEIJING, May 23 (Xinhua) -- China will further promote the development of its service trade by improving related mechanisms, building related platforms, deepening opening-up, innovating development modes and expanding cooperation, said Wang Bingnan, China's Vice Minister of Commerce on Wednesday.
Wang noted at a press conference that the Chinese economy is shifting to a service-oriented economy at a faster speed as service sector has become an important growth pole of the world economy.
China's service sector took up 52.2 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) last year, 11.5 percentage points higher than that of the second industry, becoming a main economic growth driver, noted Wang.
China's service trade has kept expanding, said Wang, adding that the country's service imports and exports registered a year-on-year growth of 11.5 percent to 5.24 trillion yuan in 2018, and the proportion of China's service trade in its foreign trade increased from 11.1 percent in 2012 to 14.7 percent in 2018.
Knowledge-intensive service trade has grown steadily, the imports and exports of which notched 1.7 trillion yuan in 2018, up 20.7 percent year on year and accounting for 32.4 percent of China's total service trade, according to him.
The pilot projects for innovative development of service trade initiated in 2016 was deepened in 2018, with the construction of 31 service outsourcing demonstration cities and 13 national cultural export bases being advanced simultaneously, further optimizing the opening-up structure.
Currently, China has conducted service trade with more than 200 countries and regions, and its service imports and exports with Belt and Road countries and regions reached 121.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2018. There have been 14 countries establishing bilateral cooperation mechanism on service trade with China.
To further boost the service trade, China will quicken the innovation in related mechanisms and policies conducive to high-quality growth of service trade, and forge demonstration cities in service outsourcing, national cultural export bases and service trade bases featuring digital service, Chinese medicine service, etc., said Wang.
Besides, China will continue to foster free and convenient service trade by promoting higher-level opening-up in service sector, develop digital, intelligent and high-end service trade, and expand cooperation with key partners in service trade with Belt and Road countries and regions in particular. (Edited by Gu Shanshan)
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