In the first half of this year, the scale of China's service trade maintained a high-speed growth trend, achieving double-digit growth. From January to June, China's total import and export of services reached 506.4 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 11.2%, with a growth rate 6.3 percentage points higher than that of 2023. Compared with the world's service trade powerhouses, the United States and Germany, China's service trade growth rate in the first half of the year was 3.1 percentage points and 9.3 percentage points higher, respectively. It is worth noting that travel service trade has once again become the largest sector of China's service trade. On the one hand, with the recovery of consumer confidence, residents' willingness to travel internationally has significantly increased, promoting high-speed growth in the import of travel services. On the other hand, China has strengthened its policy support for the tourism industry, including more countries in the "visa free friend circle". The number of foreign tourists entering the country continues to rise, promoting the growth of travel service exports. In addition, the import of personal cultural and entertainment services has achieved a leapfrog growth. From the demand side, Chinese consumers' demand for personal cultural and entertainment projects is significantly increasing. From the supply side, China's degree of opening up to the outside world in related fields is gradually increasing, and more excellent overseas cultural and entertainment projects are entering the domestic market. The effective combination of supply and demand has achieved rapid growth in the import of personal entertainment services. While achieving certain results, the high-quality development of China's service trade still faces challenges. The overall competitiveness of service trade needs to be improved. China's service trade has long been in a deficit state. From January to June, China's service trade deficit reached 662.87 billion yuan. Compared with the world's service trade powers, China's service trade still needs to enhance its competitiveness. The structure of service trade urgently needs to be optimized. From January to June, China's knowledge intensive service trade accounted for 39.4% of the total service trade. On the basis of consolidating the advantages of traditional service trade fields such as transportation and construction, the proportion of knowledge intensive service trade in China's service trade still needs to be increased. The digital transformation of service trade still needs to be accelerated. Advanced technologies such as big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence can significantly reduce transaction costs in service trade, and have become important drivers for promoting the growth of service trade scale, optimizing structure, and achieving high-quality growth. At present, the proportion of service trade that can be digitally delivered in China is about 40%, which is lower than the average level of developed countries. This indicates that there is still room for improvement in the digital transformation of China's service trade. Looking ahead to the future, with the continuous deepening of international economic and trade cooperation, increasing domestic policy support, and rapid iteration of digital technology, China's service trade development faces enormous opportunities. At the same time, factors such as global economic uncertainty, geopolitical risks, and insufficient innovation capabilities also pose challenges to the development of China's service trade. In the face of risks and challenges, China should focus on innovative upgrading of service trade, further strengthen its advantages in super large scale markets, promote mutual promotion of domestic and international dual circulation, and expand service imports with scale advantages; Fully implement the negative list of cross-border service trade, actively connect with high standard international economic and trade rules, and promote high-level opening up of the service industry with a focus on institutional opening up; Further expand the scope of global service trade cooperation, enhance international service capabilities, and build a diversified and high standard service trade network system; Actively promote the digitalization process of service trade and create a digital trade demonstration zone. (New Society)