On December 20, the State Council issued the Reply of the State Council on Approving the Comprehensive Pilot Program for the Expanded Opening up of the Service Industry in Shenyang and other six cities, agreeing to carry out the comprehensive pilot program for the expanded opening up of the service industry in Shenyang, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Guangzhou and Chengdu. The pilot period is three years from the date of the official reply. As early as May 2015, the State Council agreed to carry out a comprehensive pilot project to expand the opening up of the service industry in Beijing. In April 2021, the pilot area will be expanded for the first time to include Tianjin, Shanghai, Hainan and Chongqing, forming a "1+4" pattern. Now, the pilot area has been expanded again, and six new members including Shenyang, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Guangzhou and Chengdu have been added, which means that China's high-level opening up has reached a new level. Zhang Yong, deputy director of the Shanghai Finance and Development Laboratory, said in an interview with the Securities Daily that this expansion fully demonstrated to the world China's attitude of adhering to promoting high-level opening up. The opening of the manufacturing industry is more about the introduction of technology, equipment and capital, while the opening of the service industry mainly involves cultural media, cross-border data flow, etc. The shortlisted cities face significant opportunities. After nearly seven years of continuous innovation and exploration, the "1+4" demonstration pilot has promoted seven batches of 35 experience cases to the whole country, accumulating experience and exploring the path for the opening of the service industry nationwide. The leading and exemplary role of the "1+4" demonstration pilot is increasingly apparent. According to the data of the Ministry of Commerce, in 2021, the service industry of the above five provinces and cities will create 9.3 trillion yuan of added value, accounting for 69.6% of the regional GDP, 16.3 percentage points higher than the national average; The actual use of foreign capital in the service industry of five provinces and cities was 305.29 billion yuan, accounting for 33.7% of the actual use of foreign capital in the service industry nationwide and 26.6% of the actual use of foreign capital nationwide. Liu Xiangdong, vice minister of the Economic Research Department of the China International Economic Exchange Center, told the Securities Daily that on the trend, China's service industry has made remarkable progress in opening up, the structure of service imports and exports has been continuously optimized, the transformation and upgrading of foreign trade in services have been accelerated, and the level of service trade opening has been constantly improved. For example, since 2018, China has significantly accelerated the pace of opening up the financial services industry, and has cancelled the joint venture requirements and foreign equity ratio restrictions on banking, securities and insurance transactions (including reinsurance) and asset management. "In recent years, the epidemic has greatly inhibited the service industry. As the impact of the epidemic diminishes in the future, catering, tourism, accommodation and other service industries will gradually recover," said Liu Xiangdong. The recently held Central Economic Work Conference pointed out that "we should expand market access and open up the modern service industry". "Looking at the moment, the rapid growth of the service industry has become an important engine to promote the development of the global economy. China's manufacturing market has formed a good situation of opening to the outside world, but the opening process of the service industry market is relatively slow, which does not match the situation that China's service industry has exceeded the manufacturing industry as the leading industry in the national economy, and also restricts the overall improvement of China's service industry scale, quality and efficiency to a large extent." Fu Yifu, senior researcher of Xingtu Financial Research Institute, is accepting the reporter of Securities Daily