China's service exports expand fast in 2017
China's service exports witnessed fast expansion in 2017, outpacing the growth of imports for the first time in seven years, data from the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) showed Monday.
The value of service exports gained 10.6 percent to 1.54 trillion yuan ($240 billion) last year, while imports increased 5.1 percent to 3.16 trillion yuan, resulting in a 1.62-trillion-yuan deficit, the MOC said in a statement.
In contrast to merchandise trade, trade in services refers to the sale and delivery of intangible products such as transportation, tourism, telecommunications, construction, advertising, computing, and accounting.
The overall volume of service trade maintained a steady growth, rising 6.8 percent from the 2016 level to 4.7 trillion yuan, said the MOC.
Xian Guoyi, head of the ministry's service trade department, attributed the faster growth in exports to China's expanding producer service sector and stronger competitiveness in professional services and emerging services.
In 2017, imports and exports in emerging services surged 11.1 percent, 4.3 percentage points higher than the overall increase.
As part of efforts to create new economic drivers, China has been improving its service sector and rolling out measures to make it more competitive, including gradually opening up the finance, education, culture and medical sectors.
In 2016, ten provinces and cities including Tianjin, Shanghai, Hainan and Shenzhen, as well as five new economic zones were chosen as pilot areas for service trade innovation.
The country has also launched an investment fund of 30 billion yuan last month to guide service trade development and facilitate the transformation of China's foreign trade patterns.
Meanwhile, China's push to cultivate innovation-driven growth will inject new life into the country's real economy and fuel the integration of cutting-edge technologies with manufac- turing, experts said.
These experts spoke on the subject after Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, urged the promotion of innovation as part of the country's efforts to develop a modernized economy and to push the country's economic development to a new level.
Qu Xianming, an expert with the National Manufacturing Strategy Advisory Committee, said that as China pushes the in-depth incorporation of technological advances with economic and social development, innovation will contribute to an increasingly larger part of the real economy.
"Industrial growth will benefit considerably from the strategy, which can motivate the long-predicted convergence of IT and industrial worlds to pick up momentum in China," Qu said.
According to the 2017 report of the World Intellectual Property Organization, China is the only middleincome country among the world's top 25 most innovative economies, where it is ranked 22.
China now has more researchers than the United States, outspends the European Union in research and development and "is on track to beat all other nations in its yearly production of scientific papers", the renowned scientific magazine Nature reported.
But more efforts are needed to leverage such technological and innovative prowess to drive the country's real economy. That is what Xi emphasized during a group study of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee last week.
Xi, also president of China, said as part of the task to build a modernized economy, the country should use innovation to lead the development of various sectors; and push the incorporation of the internet, big data and artificial intelligence with the real economy.
He also urged deepening the economic system's reform to speed the improvement of the socialist market economy system, surpass various system and procedural hurdles and stimulate the public's enthusiasm by promoting innovation and entrepreneurship.