The Ministry of Commerce announced on the 29th the development of service trade in the first quarter of 2025. In the first quarter of 2025, China's service trade grew rapidly, with a total import and export volume of 1974.18 billion yuan (RMB, the same below), a year-on-year increase of 8.7%. Among them, exports amounted to 835.15 billion yuan, an increase of 12.2%; Imports amounted to 1139.03 billion yuan, an increase of 6.2%. The growth rate of service trade in the first quarter, whether it is imports or exports, is significantly higher than that of goods trade. "(The first quarter) trade in services was very eye-catching, with good performance in terms of both total volume and increment," Liu Ying, a researcher at Chongyang Institute of Finance, Renmin University of China, said in an interview with China.com Finance. Among them, the export of travel services has grown the fastest. In the first quarter, travel services continued to maintain high-speed growth, with imports and exports reaching 584.9 billion yuan, an increase of 21.8%, making it the largest sector of service trade; Exports increased by 97.5% and imports increased by 14.9%. Liu Ying mentioned that the significant increase in travel service exports is partly due to the sustained positive development trend of the domestic economy, which provides support for the development of cross-border tourism business. On the other hand, China's high-level opening-up measures continue to release dividends. In recent years, China has implemented unilateral visa free policies for 38 countries, transit visa free policies for 54 countries, and extended the stay time to 240 hours, and introduced a series of entry facilitation policies. The fact that foreign tourists come as soon as they say has become a reality has ignited the inbound tourism market. In the first quarter of this year, there were 9.215 million inbound foreign tourists, a year-on-year increase of 40.2%. Since the second quarter, the United States has imposed excessive tariffs, seriously impacting the global economic order, disrupting long-term stable global economic growth, and bringing more uncertainty to China's economic and trade prospects. Generally speaking, international trade is divided into goods trade and services trade. Tariffs are mainly levied on the import and export of physical goods in goods trade, while the vast majority of service trade does not have physical forms, such as digital software services delivered online. The impact of tariff shocks on service trade is not yet significant, "said Liu Ying. Vigorously developing service trade is expected to become an important lever for optimizing trade structure and responding to external shocks. Liu Ying stated that China is the world's largest country in goods trade and has been the second largest country in global service trade for several consecutive years. However, China has a long-standing service trade deficit, with the United States being the main source of China's service trade deficit. Against the backdrop of excessive tariffs imposed by the United States, we should focus more on balancing trade in goods and trade in services, allowing for greater growth in trade in services, and making it our development goal and direction to become the world's largest country in trade in services. How to vigorously develop trade in services? Liu Ying suggested that the first step is to promote the high-quality development of the domestic service industry and accelerate the production of productive service industries. Compared with the life service industry, the productive service industry is more "tradable" and can participate more in international trade. Secondly, we need to further expand high-level opening-up in the service industry in related fields. Just last week, China released the "Comprehensive Pilot Work Plan for Accelerating the Expansion and Opening up of the Service Industry". Based on the existing pilot areas, nine cities including Dalian, Ningbo, Xiamen, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Hefei, Fuzhou, Xi'an, and Suzhou were included in the pilot scope, and it was proposed to "accelerate and strengthen the pilot work". Liu Ying said that in recent years, the service industry has become one of the important engines driving China's economic growth. The expansion and high-quality development of the service industry will play a "two-way driving" role with the acceleration of service trade. The development of trade in services is a systematic project. ”She stated that efforts should be made to increase support for service trade in areas such as technology, talent, and education, so that the development of service trade can enter a virtuous cycle. This has a huge driving effect on developing new quality productive forces according to local conditions and achieving high-quality economic development. (New Society)