China's total services imports and exports rose 4.9% year on year to nearly 2.49 trillion yuan (about $346 billion) in the first four months of 2026, according to data released by the Ministry of Commerce on Friday.

Services exports increased 15% to 985 billion yuan, while imports fell 0.8% to 1.5 trillion yuan. The services trade deficit narrowed by 139.7 billion yuan from a year earlier.

Knowledge-intensive services trade remained a major growth driver, accounting for 44.4% of China's total services trade. Among them, exports of personal cultural and entertainment services and intellectual property royalties grew 39.5% and 20.8%, respectively.

The trend was reflected in the biopharmaceutical sector. In the first five months of this year, Suzhou BioBay in east China's Jiangsu Province completed eight overseas cooperation projects involving independently developed biopharmaceutical intellectual property, with total transactions exceeding $26.6 billion, more than five times the level recorded a year earlier.