On August 5, the Service Trade Department of Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) released the general information about service import & export in the first half of 2019. The performance of knowledge-intensive services with high value-added and high technical content had impressive performance, with an increase of 9.4%. The IP royalties grew 33%.

As is learned, China’s service trade totaled 2612.46 billion yuan during the first half of the year, up 2.6% year on year. Service exports grew 9% to 933.37 billion yuan while the imports dipped 0.6% to 1.67908 trillion yuan. The deficit stood at 745.71 billion yuan, down 10.5%. According to the official of the above-mentioned department, in the first half of 2019, China’s service import & export exhibited three characteristics:

First, China’s trade of knowledge-intensive services maintained rapid expansion. The import and export of such services reached 892.39 billion yuan and grew 9.4%, 6.8 percentage points higher than the total service growth rate and accounting for 34.2% of the total service volume, 2.2 percentage points up year on year. Knowledge-intensive service exports reached 467.41 billion yuan, up 12.1%; imports registered 424.98 billion yuan, up 6.5%. The fast growth was achieved in the following areas: the IPR royalties grew 33%; the export of telecommunications, computers and information services grew 15.7% and their import rose 19.6%.

Second, the share of service trade in the external trade was increasing. In the first half year, trade in services accounted for 15.1% of the total foreign trade, 0.5 percentage points higher than that of 2018.

Third, the deficit of service trade continued to narrow. In H1, the service export kept growing faster than that in the service import, 9.6 percentage points higher to be exact. The deficit about service trade decreased 87.49 billion yuan year on year.