Chi Fulin: Focusing On Service Trade To Build A New High Level Open Economic System

In his speech, President Xi Ping pointed out that China's service trade will become an increasingly important force in promoting the development of international trade in services in 2020. As the world enters the era of service economy, service trade is not only an important symbol to measure the high-quality development of economy, but also a key factor to push the industrial chain and value chain forward to the middle and high-end. Focusing on trade in services, building a new pattern of higher-level opening and cooperation is an important goal to accelerate the establishment of a new high-level open economic system, a major measure to give full play to China's super large-scale market advantages and release the potential of domestic demand in economic transformation and upgrading, and a major task in building a new domestic and international dual cycle development pattern.

Service trade has become the focus of global free trade

At present, service trade is becoming the focus of global free trade. From 2010 to 2019, the global trade in services increased from US $7.8 trillion to US $11.9 trillion, an average annual nominal growth of 4.8%, twice the growth rate of goods trade; the proportion of service trade in total trade increased from 20.3% to 23.8%. According to the report, the proportion of global service trade in trade will rise to 50% by 2040.

The development of global pandemic digital trade services is accelerating. The epidemic has accelerated the transfer of consumers and service providers from offline to online. The rapid development of online services such as online office, online education, online health care, and e-commerce promotes the digital transformation of traditional service trade, and promotes the application of digital technology in emerging service trade, so as to realize the digitalization and intellectualization of emerging service trade. At present, more than 50% of Global trade in services has been digitized; from 2008 to 2018, the export of global digital delivery trade increased by 5.83% annually, accounting for 50.15% of service trade exports. In the future, a new round of technological revolution and industrial reform will further expand the development space of service trade and profoundly change the development pattern of global service trade.

The digital revolution expands the development space of service trade. On the one hand, the wide application of information technology in the field of service industry makes the production and consumption of service products cross the inseparable barriers, and provides objective conditions for the globalization of service industry and the development of service trade. Education, health, medical care, culture and other traditional non tradable "services" have gradually become tradable, and gradually become an important part of service trade; on the other hand, the scientific and technological revolution provides technical support for the further refinement of the global industrial division. Many service-oriented enterprises only retain core services, but not core services or intermediate services through service outsourcing, natural person flow, and so on Therefore, many developing countries will be included in the process of global service trade and further expand the development space of global service trade.

Service trade has become the focus of global economic and trade rules reconstruction. The proportion of service trade in bilateral and regional trade and investment negotiations is gradually increasing, and the rules of high standard, wide coverage and intra border service trade are gradually increasing in regional free trade agreements. Especially in the context of global epidemic, the importance of digital service trade is highlighted. In the future, the competition for standards and rules around cross-border data flow, data localization, consumer rights and privacy protection will become increasingly fierce. High tech services will also become the main area for some countries to take protectionist and unilateralist measures. The importance and urgency of strengthening the coordination of service rules at multilateral and regional levels will be comprehensively enhanced.

Promoting the opening up and transformation focusing on trade in services

China's service trade has great development potential, and it is the general trend to promote the opening-up and transformation focusing on service trade.

The rapid development of service trade has become the highlight of China's foreign trade. From 2014 to 2019, China's service trade volume has an average annual growth of 7.8%, which is 2.2 times of the growth rate of goods trade and 1.9 times of the overall growth rate of foreign trade, which has made an important contribution to the steady growth of China's foreign trade. Since 2018, Global trade friction has intensified, and the growth rate of world service trade has slowed down significantly. Over the same period, China's service trade exports increased by 17.0% year-on-year, accounting for 9.3% of the world's service exports; imports increased by 12.3% year-on-year, accounting for 14.9% of the world's service imports, becoming the largest contributor to the growth of global service imports.

The upgrading of consumption structure and industrial structure puts forward new requirements for the development of service trade. In the new era, the people's growing need for a better life puts forward various practical needs for expanding the import of high-quality services. For example, in 2019, China's per capita service consumption expenditure increased by 12.6%, accounting for 45.9% of the national per capita consumption expenditure, an increase of 1.7 percentage points over the previous year. With the rapid growth of service-oriented consumption of urban and rural residents and the gradual appearance of the policy effect of expanding high-quality service import, China's service trade still has great development potential. In addition, with the continuous improvement of the opening level of China's service industry, as well as the rapid development of service, intelligence and digital economy of manufacturing industry, it will form an important support for the rapid development of service trade.

We will accelerate the formation of a new pattern of opening-up focusing on trade in services. First of all, we should make up for the outstanding shortcomings of the lagging development of service trade as soon as possible, and strive to increase the proportion of service trade in total foreign trade from 14.6% in 2019 to more than 20% by 2025. At the same time, it is necessary to significantly enhance the international competitiveness of trade in services. On the basis of maintaining the advantages in the fields of manufacturing services, construction services, computers and information, the international competitiveness of China's producer service trade such as intellectual property rights and finance, and the trade of life services such as tourism should be greatly enhanced. In particular, new international competitive advantages of digital service trade should be formed. In addition, we should accelerate the coordination of multilateral and regional service rules, regulations, management and standards, actively participate in global economic governance, and enhance China's voice in the formulation of global service trade rules.

Promoting high quality development of service trade with high level opening up

To promote the high-quality development of service trade is inseparable from the support of a higher level of open environment.

We will accelerate the process of opening domestic services to the outside world. Under the background of the direct integration of service market opening and service trade development, the key to form a new pattern of high-level opening-up with service trade as the focus is to accelerate the opening of service market. The first is to break the market monopoly and administrative monopoly in the service sector, promote the opening of monopoly industries to social capital and optimize the distribution and structure of state-owned capital in the service sector, and take anti-monopoly, especially administrative monopoly in the service industry, as a major measure of market supervision reform; the second is to accelerate the process of opening up the service industry and improve the management of "national treatment before admission + negative list" The third is to strengthen the basic position of competition policy in the field of service industry, comprehensively clean up the industrial policies that hinder fair competition in the field of service industry, and improve the price formation mechanism of monopoly service industry.

We should strengthen the institutional arrangement of free and convenient service trade. The formation of a new driving force for high-quality development of service trade involves many institutional innovations. The first is to speed up the formulation and implementation of the national negative list of cross-border trade in services. It is suggested to reduce and reduce the "post border" barriers under the service trade mode of cross-border delivery, overseas consumption and natural person movement, and give national treatment to overseas service providers in areas beyond the negative list; the second is to form service trade standards that are in line with international standards, and take the lead in introducing international priority in the field of health care At the same time, it is necessary to establish the standard of professional mobility in China.

We will create a new highland for the opening up of service trade and form a leading demonstration for the high-quality development of service trade. The first is to connect with the international high-level economic and trade rules, form a service trade liberalization and facilitation system that is compatible with the highest level of openness, and further standardize the domestic regulations affecting the freedom and convenience of service trade. Second, we should accelerate the integration of service trade between Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao. On the basis of improving the level of service market integration, we should further reduce the restrictive conditions, speed up the cooperation in personnel training, mutual recognition of qualifications and standard formulation related to service trade, so as to broaden the development space of service industry in Hong Kong and Macao, and at the same time, drive Guangdong to form a new pattern of higher-level reform and development. The third is to speed up the establishment of a pilot free trade zone characterized by scientific and technological innovation, open service industry and digital economy, build a high-level open platform for the coordinated development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, and continue to deepen the differential exploration of other pilot free trade zones, increase stress testing, and promote the high-quality development of domestic service trade.