Support for services sector stepping up

China is stepping up policy support to boost its rapidly expanding services sector, as policymakers seek to foster a more competitive and better-structured ecosystem that will inject fresh momentum into economic growth, officials and executives said.

"China has introduced targeted measures to strengthen key areas of producer and consumer services, with a focus on easing bottlenecks and shoring up weak links," Shen Zhulin, deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at a news conference on Tuesday.

His comments came after the State Council, the country's Cabinet, released a new set of guidelines earlier this month to expand capacity and upgrade the quality of the service sector.

According to the guidelines, China will work to make producer services more specialized and higher up the value chain, while improving the quality, diversity and convenience of consumer services.

"The services sector connects investment with consumption and production with daily life," Shen said, underscoring its role as a key engine of economic growth.

China's services sector has expanded rapidly in recent years, reaching 80.9 trillion yuan ($11.86 trillion) at the end of 2025 and contributing 61.4 percent to economic growth, Shen said. To achieve the projected 20 trillion yuan increase, authorities will place greater emphasis on both producer and consumer services in the next stage.

On the producer services front, the guidelines call for efforts to accelerate innovation-driven development in software and information services.

Highlighting the growing weight of the sector, Ke Jixin, vice-minister of industry and information technology, said the software and information technology services sector, a pillar of producer services, reported 15.48 trillion yuan in revenue in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 15.1 percent. With the deeper integration of the "AI Plus" initiative across sectors, the ministry will accelerate the development and application of AI-powered programming and foster emerging service models such as model-as-a-service and agent-as-a-service.

On the consumer services front, China's consumption structure is also evolving, as demand for services closely related to people's daily lives continues to grow.

"China's consumer market is shifting from a goods-dominated model toward services consumption that is more personalized, diversified and quality-oriented," said Zhang Li, assistant minister of commerce. The ministry will further expand high-quality service offerings, create more diverse consumption scenarios and foster new growth drivers to inject more vitality into services consumption.

The policy push has also reinforced the confidence of foreign companies in the growth prospects of China's services market.

Ni Xiaorong, president for China unit at Swiss logistics service provider Kuehne+Nagel International AG, said China plays a multidimensional role for the company — as a key market, a critical logistics hub and a capability center. This multidimensional role underpins the company's continued investment in China.

Contact the writers at zhangchenxu@chinadaily.com.cn