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Promote the opening up of the service industry and accelerate the pace of China’s economic transformation and upgrade.
The China International Trade in Services Fair 2020 will be held in Beijing from September 4-9. With the theme “Global Service, Mutual Benefits and Participation”, this year’s Service Fair, a total of 18,000 companies and institutions from 148 countries and regions, and 100,000 registered participants. The exhibition area of the Service Fair covers an area of about 200,000 square meters, divided into a comprehensive exhibition area, 8 special exhibition areas, and various functional service areas.
In the context of the standardization of epidemic prevention and control, holding a combination of online and offline services trade fairs shows China’s firm determination to open up to the outside world and its confidence in coordinating the prevention and control of epidemics and economic and social development. More importantly, paying attention to the openness of the service industry will help accelerate the pace of China’s economic transformation and improvement, and is of great importance for the high-quality development of the Chinese economy.
In the “troika” promoting China’s economic development, consumption has outstripped investment and import and export, and has become a major driving force behind China’s economic growth. As the income level of residents rises, consumption has gradually shifted from agricultural and industrial products in primary and secondary industries to service industry in tertiary industry. In particular, the demand for education, healthcare, financial services, and cultural and travel services has strengthened. The transformation of this economic growth momentum determines that the Chinese economy should accelerate the transformation and improvement of the structure and accelerate the development of modern service industries to meet people’s needs for a better life.
During the past 40 years of reform and opening-up, although China’s service industry has achieved remarkable results, there are still many gaps in the level of development of the service industry compared to developed countries. At present, the share of services in China’s domestic consumption has exceeded 65%, while the share of services in domestic supply is less than 40%. The contradiction of insufficient domestic supply is obvious, and there are many services such as education, health care, elderly care and tourism. The gap in the supply of high-end services is even greater. Therefore, accelerating the development of the service industry is an important part of promoting the high-quality development of the Chinese economy.
To accelerate the development of the service industry, we must unswervingly promote openness. Especially in the case of the current development of China’s low-technology service industry, it is necessary to absorb and learn from all foreign advanced technology and management experience to improve the quality and efficiency of development while promoting the optimization of the economic structure. China is the world’s largest trader of goods and a major contributor to the growth of global trade in services. According to statistics, in the last 15 years, China’s service exports have grown at an average annual rate of 9%, 2.9% more than the world average growth rate during the same period; China’s service imports totaled US $ 4.5 trillion, contributing 12.9% of the global growth rate of service imports, which has boosted global services. Imports increased by 10.4 percentage points.
Based on this, China needs to promote the opening of the service industry. Holding an international services trade fair is a move to create an important platform for the service industry to open up to the outside world. It can promote a broader and deeper opening of China’s service industry and strengthen the transformation and improvement of China’s service industry on the basis of attracting foreign investment and technology. Achieve a balanced development of trade in services.
In order to promote open cooperation in the service industry, President Xi Jinping introduced a series of measures in his speech, such as establishing and improving the cross-border service trade negative list management system, promoting the construction of a platform open for innovative development of trade in services, continue to relax market access for the service industry and actively expand Import high-quality services, accelerate international cooperation in the digital field, increase intellectual property protection and support training of a global services business alliance. Previously, China had taken a series of measures to expand the openness of the service industry. For example, in the negative list of special management measures for access to foreign investment published this year, the negative list of access to the financial industry has been officially eliminated. These measures will not only help attract foreign investment, but will also form a good competitive landscape, which is of great importance for the transformation and improvement of China’s service industry. (Li Ning, Registered Tax Agent, Economic Daily-China Economic Net columnist)
