On January 30, the Ministry of Commerce released data showing that China's service trade will maintain rapid growth in 2022. The total import and export of services in the year was 5980.19 billion yuan (RMB, the same below), up 12.9% year on year. Among them, service export was 285.224 billion yuan, up 12.1%; Import reached 3127.95 billion yuan, up 13.5%; The deficit was 275.71 billion yuan. Xiao Benhua, deputy director of the Free Trade Zone Research Institute of Shanghai Lixin Institute of Accounting and Finance, said in an interview with the reporter of Securities Daily that China's service trade will make steady progress in 2022. On the basis of maintaining a high growth rate, the structure of service trade will be further optimized and the import and export of service trade will be more balanced. According to the person in charge of the Service and Trade Department of the Ministry of Commerce, the import and export of knowledge-intensive services will grow steadily in 2022. Among them, the export growth will be faster in the fields of intellectual property royalties, telecommunications and computer and information services, with growth of 17.5% and 13% respectively; The area of rapid import growth is insurance services, with a growth rate of 35.8%. In addition, the import and export of travel services continued to recover, and the overall situation of travel services showed a recovery. The import and export of travel services throughout the year was 855.98 billion yuan, up 8.4%. In Xiao Benhua's view, the import and export of knowledge-intensive services have maintained a steady growth due to both supply and demand reasons. From the supply side, with the support of policy, China's international competitiveness of knowledge-intensive services has been increasing; From the demand side, the global demand for knowledge-intensive services has been increasing in recent years. As for how to further optimize the service import and export structure, Liu Xiangdong, deputy director of the Economic Research Department of the China International Economic Exchange Center, told the Securities Daily that, first of all, in view of the strong demand released by China's high-quality development, we should further expand the import of services such as research and development, energy conservation and carbon reduction, environmental services, medical care, etc; Secondly, we should expand the export of tourism, transportation and other traditional services after the optimization and adjustment of epidemic prevention and control; Finally, we should accelerate the promotion of knowledge-intensive services and expand the export of services with Chinese characteristics such as cultural services and traditional Chinese medicine services. Recently, many places have stated that they will further develop the service economy and promote the high-quality development of service trade. For example, on January 29, Gu Jun, director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce, said at the press conference of the Shanghai Municipal Government that in 2023, Shanghai will vigorously promote the innovative development of service trade. We will continue to deepen the pilot work of innovative development of service trade in an all-round way and strive to create a national demonstration zone for innovative development of service trade. Improve the level of national characteristic service export bases such as digital services, and promote the transformation and upgrading of service outsourcing around industries such as biomedicine, information technology, and integrated circuits. Looking forward to 2023, Xiao Benhua said that China's service trade is expected to maintain stable development in general, and the import and export of travel services will show rapid growth. It is suggested to further promote the transformation and upgrading of China's service trade in the future, and vigorously develop new forms of trade such as digital trade and offshore trade. (Xinhua News Agency)