The 2025 Central Economic Work Conference has set “continuing opening-up and achieving win-win cooperation in various fields” as an important task for China’s economic work next year, announcing specific measures such as “gradually expanding independent opening-up of the service sector”.
Expanding service sector opening-up is a crucial part of China’s opening-up and a major pillar of economic development. Currently, China’s goods trade has ranked first in the world for 8 consecutive years, and its service trade volume exceeded $1 trillion for the first time in 2024, ranking second globally.
The growth of high-end manufacturing services and consumer services such as sports, elderly care, and childcare is particularly notable, indicating huge development potential in service trade.
Chen Hongna, Associate Researcher at the Foreign Economic Research Division of the State Council’s Development Research Center, says including “gradually expanding independent opening-up of the service sector” as a key opening-up step demonstrates China’s firm commitment to high-level opening-up and signals the importance of using the service sector to create new economic growth momentum.
The emphasis on “gradually” and “independent” highlights the need for a phased approach, prioritizing national security, and identifying opening-up priorities based on China’s development level, industrial structure, and innovation capabilities.
Chen notes that service sector opening-up has a strong spillover effect. China’s negative list has been continuously reduced, expanding opening-up in key sectors like finance, telecoms, healthcare, education, culture, and tourism, increasing policy predictability.
This has attracted high-quality foreign investment, promoted domestic enterprises’ professionalism and service quality, and strengthened international competitiveness.
Higher-level opening-up will drive China-world cooperation, accelerating the “dual drive of goods trade and service trade” and unleashing market potential, boosting economic development momentum.
Source: China Media Group.