China's services trade brings new impetus to an open economy

Global trade shifts toward services and digital value

For a long time, international trade has revolved around physical commodities. Manufacturing capacity, logistics costs and tariff barriers defined a country's foreign‑trade competitiveness. Over the past decade, however, profound structural shifts have reshaped global trade. Trade in services, particularly digitally deliverable services, has consistently outpaced the trade in goods, forming the most important source of global economic growth.

According to UN Conference on Trade and Development data, the services trade has kept rising as a share of total global trade, while digital technologies have eased the traditional constraints on the cross-border delivery of services. Intangible products such as algorithms, computing power, copyrights and technology licensing can be transmitted across borders in real time, rewriting the business logic of international trade.

"Made in China" has written decades-long legends in China's opening-up drive. Yet external pressures are forcing a shift in the logic of growth. The trade in traditional goods faces headwinds including trade frictions, industrial chain relocation and sluggish global demand. Against this backdrop, the trade in developing services and promoting "China's Services" to go global have become an inevitable choice for upgrading China's open‑oriented economy.

Official statistics from the Ministry of Commerce confirm this structural shift. In 2025, China's total imports and exports of services reached 8.08 trillion yuan ($1.2 trillion), up 7.4% year‑on‑year, outpacing growth in the goods trade and securing China's position among the world's leading services trade economies.

In the first half of 2026, China's services exports stood at 1.50 trillion yuan, surging 17.6% year‑on‑year, far outstripping import growth. Most notably, knowledge-intensive services exports hit 805.7 billion yuan in the first half of 2026, accounting for 53.5% of total services exports. High-value knowledge and technology-driven services now make up more than half of China's service exports, marking a historic pivot from traditional labor and transport services toward knowledge-based output.

Digital innovation unlocks fresh growth for 'China's Services'

In the early days, Chinese services going global were dominated by engineering contracting, cross‑border transport and traditional labor exports. Today, new highlights, including large language model-driven computing power exports, game exports, short video and micro drama exports and overseas intellectual property licensing, paint a new portrait of "China's Services," with digital technologies serving as the core engine for services exports.

Computing power and large model exports represent the cutting edge of digital trade. The Overseas Chinese Economic and Cultural Cooperation Pilot Zone in Shantou, Guangdong Province, has built viable commercial workflows. Foreign artificial intelligence (AI) hardware and terminal enterprises directly access domestic computing power resources. Daily token call volumes have expanded from 100 million to tens of billions. Lingang Special Area has also launched an "AI+ Going Global" platform. Domestic multimodal large models serve Southeast Asian markets such as Singapore via dedicated cross-border links with a rising number of daily calls.

Digital cultural exports are booming, with games, short videos and micro dramas as major workhorses. Data from the China Audio‑Video and Digital Publishing Association show that overseas revenue from Chinese self-developed games hit $12.37 billion in the first half of 2026, up 30.22% year‑on‑year, far outperforming domestic market growth. Titles such as "Black Myth: Wukong' and "Honkai: Star Rail" export sophisticated technology, art and intellectual property (IP) culture.

Chinese games have moved beyond simple reskinning toward premium global IP operation. Short video platforms and Chinese micro dramas have gained traction across Southeast Asia, Europe and North America. Adapted for local audiences, micro dramas rack up hundreds of millions of views on overseas streaming platforms. According to the Ministry of Commerce, exports of personal cultural and recreational services jumped 57.2% year‑on‑year in the first half of 2026, ranking among the fastest growing services trade segments.

Rising overseas IP licensing revenues signal growing global commercial returns for Chinese innovation. For years, China mainly imported foreign patents and experienced IP trade deficits. As domestic innovation accumulates, patents, software copyrights and cultural property licensing generate growing overseas income.

IP royalty exports surged 44.3% year‑on‑year in the first half of 2026, one of the sharpest growth rates across all services trade categories. Growth spans licensing of new energy technology patents, overseas adaptation of online literature IP and global licensing of toy and cultural brands.

Institutional opening up consolidating long‑term competitive advantages for 'China's Services'

The shift from "Made in China" to "China's Services" is no simple industrial replacement. It calls for corporate innovation as well as high‑level institutional opening up. Unlike goods trade competition centered on costs and production capacity, the services trade competition hinges on institutions: business environments, IP protection, cross-border data flows and service-sector market access.

To unlock sustained growth for "China's Services," China will strengthen the competitiveness of market players while removing institutional barriers, balance opening up with security, and build institutional frameworks adapted to digital-era services trades.

China will further reduce the negative-list system for cross-border services and foreign investment, widen access in areas such as finance, research and development and professional services and encourage domestic service providers to upgrade via competition. A large domestic market allows enterprises to test run and refine products before going global. Events such as the China International Fair for Trade in Services build bridges for digital services and IP licensing firms.