On September 2, 2024, the General Office of the State Council released the Opinions on Promoting High-Quality Development of Trade in Services Through High-Standard Opening up (hereinafter referred to as Opinions), which is an important policy document issued by the State Council concerning the foreign trade after the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee. It provides an overall and systematic plan for the high-quality development of trade in services under the current circumstances, further clarifying the mechanism, support, path, and priority for China's institutional opening-up of trade in services. This points out the direction for opening up China's trade in services to the global market in the future. China should keep up the momentum to improve the negative list management system for cross-border trade in services, promote cross-border flow of resource elements, facilitate international cooperation in the field of trade in services, optimize measures supporting the opening up of trade in services, and further boost the high-standard opening up and high-quality development of trade in services.

Increasing Level of Opening-up of China's Trade in Services through Development

The volume of China's trade in services is growing steadily, with increasing competitiveness in the global market. Following its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), China has fully fulfilled its WTO commitments. With the accelerated opening up of the service sector and the gradual maturity of the management structure and promotion mechanism of trade in services, the development of trade in services has entered a fast track. According to the statistics from the Ministry of Commerce, the total volume of China's trade in services has experienced remarkable growth, increasing from just over US$4 billion in 1982 to US$933.10 billion in 2023, a 233-fold increase. From 2012 to 2023, in US dollar terms, the compound annual growth rate of China's trade in services reached 6.2%, surpassing both the global average growth rate and the growth rate of China's trade in goods during the same period.