Steady rise in China’s foreign trade in services 
2019-08-06
China’s foreign trade in services grew steadily in the first half of 2019, accounting for a higher proportion of the overall foreign trade volume.
China’s services sector posted foreign trade exceeding 2.61 trillion yuan (US$371.6 billion) in the first half of 2019, an increase of 2.6 percent year on year, according to the Department of Trade in Services and Commercial Services of China’s Ministry of Commerce.
Imports in services jumped 9.5 percent to 933.37 billion yuan, while exports edged down 0.6 percent to around 1.68 trillion yuan, shrinking the deficit 10.5 percent to 745.71 billion yuan, the department said.
China’s service sector has achieved rapid growth in the January-June period, with the value-added output in the service industry reaching 7 percent.
The proportion of the service trade in the total volume of foreign trade reached 15.1 percent in the first half of 2019, 0.5 percentage points higher than the whole year of 2018. 
Meanwhile, exports in services continued to grow 9.8 percentage points faster than imports, leading to a decline in the deficit in services by 87.49 billion yuan from a year earlier. 
In dollar terms, the deficit in services fell US$20.85 billion, or 15.9 percent, compared with the same period last year.
Of note, foreign trade in knowledge-intensive services with high-added value and high technology grew rapidly in the first half of 2019.
The total value of imports and exports in the knowledge-intensive services reached 892.39 billion yuan, an increase of 9.4 percent which is 6.8 percentage points faster than the overall growth of trade in services.
Trade in knowledge-intensive services accounted for 34.2 percent of the headline figure of trade in services, up 2.2 percentage points from a year earlier. Among them, exports totaled 467.41 billion yuan, up 12.1 percent, while imports added up to 424.98 billion yuan, up 6.5 percent. 
In areas posting fast growth, the export of royalties for intellectual property rights surged 33 percent; exports in telecommunications, computer and information services jumped 15.7 percent; while the financial services sector saw exports increasing by 13.9 percent and imports up 43.9 percent.
