China's service trade posts steady expansion, as travel, transport lead export growth

BEIJING - China's trade in services maintained steady growth in the first seven months of 2026, as the export of travel and transport services drove more than half of the overall export expansion, official data showed Thursday.

The country's services trade totaled nearly 4.45 trillion yuan ($655.8 billion) during the period, up 8.3 percent year-on-year, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

During the period, services exports rose 17.1 percent year-on-year to over 1.77 trillion yuan. Services imports reached 2.67 trillion yuan, up 3.2 percent from a year earlier. The country's services trade deficit narrowed by 176.33 billion yuan from a year earlier to 900.25 billion yuan.

A breakdown of the data showed travel and transport services emerged as the two export growth drivers. Travel services exports surged 27.7 percent, while transport services exports rose 27.1 percent. The two categories contributed 22.1 percent and 29.9 percent, respectively, to the overall growth of services exports.

Knowledge-intensive services also remained a pillar of China's export mix. Trade in such services, which include telecommunications, information technology, finance, intellectual property and other business services, increased 6.6 percent to 1.96 trillion yuan, accounting for 44.1 percent of the country's total services trade.

China has intensified policy efforts to boost service sector development. The outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) and this year's government work report both made specific arrangements for this sector.

In April, the State Council issued a guideline on advancing the expansion and quality upgrading of the sector. According to the guideline, China aims to make marked progress in high-quality service sector development by 2030, with the total scale of the sector exceeding 100 trillion yuan by then, while more competitive and influential "China services" brands will be cultivated.