BEIJING – Data released on Wednesday showed that China service trade rose 4.1% year-on-year to 1.74 trillion yuan ($252.84 billion) in the first four months of this year.
During this period, service exports increased by 10.1%, while imports increased by 1.1%. According to data from the Ministry of Commerce (MOC), the service trade deficit fell by 9.7% year-on-year to 506.06 billion yuan.
MOC official Zhu Guangyao said that in April alone, the China service trade volume increased by 9% compared with the same period of last year, and the growth rate increased from 2.2% in March, indicating that the country’s service trade maintained a good growth momentum.
China service trade data comes from the strong development of the service industry, which accounted for 52.2% of last year’s GDP. The service sector index is a measure of the industry’s business, which was 7.4% in April, the second highest since September.
Data on Wednesday also showed that the country’s knowledge-intensive business service exports increased by 14.7% during the January-April period, with intellectual property royalties and financial services exports increasing by 37.8% and 21.8%, respectively.
Zhu Rongji attributed the rapid expansion to the continuous supply-side structural reform and the improvement of the competitiveness of the national producer service industry, and expects the knowledge-intensive business service trade to continue to develop rapidly.
According to MOC data, imports of knowledge-intensive business services increased by 10.4% during this period.
