During China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS), China's Ministry of Commerce, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China's Development Research Center of the State Council and World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF) organized 5 summits to exchange ideas on high-quality development of trade in services, open cooperation, new digital ecology and revitalization of world tourism. On September 5th in the section of Shougang Group, heads of government from home and abroad, entrepreneurs, scholars of think tanks, representatives of international institutes and Cultural Exchange Organization of Presenting China to the World communicated about the new development tendency of trade in services and contributed wisdom and strength to the development and prosperity of global trade in services.
Due to the pandemic, the global cross-border investment in 2020 decreased 42% and trade in services suffered from serious impact. In addition, the digitalization of trade in servers accelerated, bringing new opportunities to the structural adjustment and the progress of a new-type service trade.
“The more difficult the situation is, the more confidence we need. The more serious the pandemic is, the more cooperation we need to enhance. An open service trade and it’s development are important ways for countries to be integrated into the economic globalization and to be a part of international competition and cooperation”, said Man Jiantang, secretary of the leading party group of China's Development Research Center of the State Council. He also said that in the last 10 years, the average increasing rate of trade in service had been twice of that of trade in goods, so it’s more significant to support global economic increase and the improvement of the global value chain.
China’s expanding scale of service import and export had been ranking the 2nd in the world for 7 consecutive years. “Chinese government has been promoting the integrated development of trade in services. China is the 2nd largest import country of trade in service and the 4th largest trade export country. It’s service trade had been developing and diversifying on a daily bases”, said Victoria Kwakwa, World Bank Regional Vice President for East Asia and the Pacific. She also stressed that trade in services could help countries to recover in a fast and better way in the pandemic and sped up the digital transformation of the world economy.
Marcos Troyjo, president of New Development Bank of the BRICS, said that against the background of reemerging protectionism, trade in services had been more and more significant. He said, “Trade in services occupies a more and more important position in global trade. It can also benefit other sectors like manufacturing.” He recognized China’s scientific and technological development achievement, new type of industrial process and protection of intellectual property, believing that “they are significant for the reconstruction of a global value chain”.
“In the past 20 years, the proportion of trade in service in the global economy doubled and trade is playing an important role in world economy”, said Steven Alan Barnett, chief representative of IMF in China. He also said that China would continue to expand opening-up; support free trade in service and inject new driving forces in the recovery of world economy.
Tourism forecast the prospect of world economy, so the recovery and revitalization of tourism was important for the recovery and development of world economy. In the tourism forum, representatives of global tourism exchanged their ideas on the redevelopment of tourism amid the pandemic. The forum established the “World Tourism City Development Report (2020)” which offered intellectual support of world tourism recovery. Hu Heping, China’s minister of culture and tourism, said in the forum that countries of the world should carry out win-win cooperation; enhance international tourism cooperation; create opportunities in an open environment; solve problems in cooperation and support high-quality development of world tourism.
In 2020, the export of global digital trade increased 3.8% in a disadvantageous environment. It’s proportion in service trade had risen to 62.8% and it contributed to 98.3% of service export increase. As a result, “digital trade” was a new form of global trade and a new driving force for future trade, thus one of the key words in the CIFTIS.
In the forum related to digital development, guests gave suggestions to push forward the digital economy and digital trade between China and the world, from the perfection of laws and stipulation and infrastructure improvement to leading sustainable development and pushing the digital transformation of enterprises.
A vice chairman of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that digital trade and technology in the post pandemic era was a guarantee for sustainable development. He said that China’s experience to support sustainable development was worth learning for other countries. He also said, “China has balanced economic development, social progress and ecological protection and thusly stepped on the road of inclusive green development and built a new mode of sustainable development.”
Li Ruiqi, CEO and Boston consulting president, believed that China boosted strong industry, foundation of internet consumption market, world’s leading digital ecology, so it had a promising future in digital trade whose innovative service mode could be promoted in the world.
Han Xia, chief engineer of China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, stressed that China needed to be further integrated in to the construction of global digital governance system. He said, “The government should make full use of various bilateral mechanism, enhance international communication and cooperation, be a part of the construction of the global digital governance system and be one of the members to stipulate rules for the governance of global digital economy and digital trade.”
Huang Chenhong, SAP’s vice executive president and president of China, held that digital era changed the logic of trade. The carrier of new enterprises was “digital ecological symbiosis”. Digitalization not only improved enterprise efficiency and decreased cost, but also connected people in different places.
Luis Diego Monsalve said that China was in the leading position in the digital platform construction. He expressed, “The digital platforms built by China have been able to give people access to services in finance, education and other fields without going out, which can improve the convenience of trade and investment and offer more development opportunities. If more digital platform can connect to each, a better world can be build.”
In the first half of this year, a series of measures to improve the openness of China’s trade in service had been complimented, for example, adding 4 new comprehensive pilot to expand the scale of service industry; establishing a negative list of cross-border trade service in Hainan free trade port; promoting best cases in the pilot zone to enhance the innovation and development of trade in services...
“The openness and development of China’s service industry has made great contribution to the world. In 2020, the value of it’s service import and export amounts to 661.7 billion dollars”, said Yu Jianhua, negotiation delegate of international trade and vice minister of China's Ministry of Commerce. He also said that in the past decade, China had imported services worth more than 4000 billion dollars, contributing 24% of world service import and about 1.9 million jobs for global trade partners per year according to the estimation.
In the starting year of the “14th Five Year” plan, Chinese government had major achievement in the opening of trade in services. Zhang Jun, deputy director of Development Research Center of the State Council, said that in the first half of this year, foreign capital used by China’s service industry increased 33.4% compared to the same period of the last year, 4.7% higher than that of the whole country. Nearly 80% of service industry used foreign capital.
China benefited from the continuous improvement of business environment and had been the second largest foreign direct investment country for consecutive years with service industry as a new trend. Yi Xiaozhun, former general director of WTO, said that foreign capital flowed into China’s modern service industry, which was conducive for China’s traditional manufacture to be integrated with 5G, cloud computing, AI, big data and other new generation of information technology. This improved China’s overall economic competitiveness and solidified China’s position in the global value chain, so China’s economy was more closely integrated with that of the world and broke the rumor that China disconnected with the world.
In recent years, China’s financial service had made new progress in the opening to the outside world. Qi Yaonian, chief executive officer of HSBC, expressed that HSBC would continue to invest in China. He said, “We couldn’t do this without China’s continual opening-up.”