China maintained a steady growth in trade in services in 2019, which has become a new stabilizer for foreign trade, an official from Ministry of Commerce said on Monday.

File photo by fotomore.com

According to data released on a conference on commercial work, in the first eleven months of 2019, China’s total volume of trade in services reached 4.87 trillion yuan ($697.92 billion), up 2.1 percent year on year. Exported services increased 8.2 percent to 1.74 trillion ($248.30 billion). The deficit in trade in services also shrank 10.5 percent to 162.3 billion yuan ($23.25 billion).

China’s trade in services saw an improvement in quality. The volume of knowledge-intensive services went up 10.2 percent to 1.67 trillion yuan ($238.91 billion), accounting for 34.2 percent of all trade in services, said Xian Guoyi, Ministry of Commerce’s official on trade in services.

From January to November, China’s offshore outsourcing execution rose 11.4 percent (counted in US dollars), and import and export of technology rose 13 percent year on year to $59.9 billion. The total volume of trade on personal, cultural and entertainment services jumped 22.6 percent. 

China also held 5,396 exhibitions across the country in 2019, covering an over-all area of 128 million square meters, the largest scale around the globe.

(Compiled by Qiao Wai)