With the continuous increase in inbound tourists, active cross-border high-end service transactions, and frequent international logistics exchanges, China's service trade will demonstrate full resilience in the first half of 2026. Faced with various external pressures such as a slowdown in global economic growth and geopolitical instability, China's service trade has achieved a good trend of expanding its scale, narrowing its trade deficit, and upgrading its structure. The semi annual data released by the Ministry of Commerce on August 4th clearly presents the high-quality development trend of China's service trade.

Outstanding overall stability and resilience

Data shows that from January to June 2026, China's total import and export of services was 3779.75 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.3%. Among them, service exports reached 1504.7 billion yuan, an increase of 17.6%, achieving double-digit high-speed growth; Imports reached 2275.05 billion yuan, an increase of 2.9%, and both imports and exports steadily rebounded.

The trade structure continues to improve, with a service trade deficit of 7703.5 billion yuan in the first half of the year, a decrease of 161.42 billion yuan compared to the same period last year. Zheng Wei, Associate Researcher at the China Service Outsourcing Research Center, stated that in a complex external environment, the high growth of service exports and the recovery of imports have driven the overall expansion of scale, and this achievement has not come easily. Li Jun, Director of the Service Trade Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce Research Institute, pointed out that the impressive export performance confirms the continuous improvement of China's international competitiveness in services, and the position of service trade in overall foreign trade will continue to rise.

Knowledge intensive services become the mainstay of exports

The optimization of China's service trade structure in the first half of the year has achieved significant results, with high value-added and high-tech knowledge intensive services becoming the core pillar of growth. From January to June 2026, China's import and export of knowledge intensive services reached 1663.4 billion yuan, an increase of 6.7%, accounting for 44% of the total import and export of services.

Among them, the export of knowledge intensive services performed outstandingly, with a total value of 805.67 billion yuan, an increase of 12.8%, accounting for 53.5% of the total service export value, or more than half. In the segmented fields, the export growth rates of personal cultural and entertainment services and intellectual property usage fees are leading, reaching 57.2% and 44.3% respectively; The import of knowledge intensive services reached 857.73 billion yuan, an increase of 1.4%. Zheng Wei analyzed that knowledge intensive service exports account for more than half, indicating that China's service trade is accelerating its transformation towards high-end and high value-added direction.

Leading the way in accelerating key areas

The growth trend of segmented tracks is differentiated, and the momentum of characteristic fields is abundant. In the first half of the year, China's travel service exports reached 229.2 billion yuan, an increase of 31.1%, ranking first among the top five service export sectors in terms of growth rate; The import of transportation services reached 498.1 billion yuan, an increase of 30.4%, leading the top five service import fields. The rapid growth of travel services is attributed to the continued support of policies. Zheng Wei stated that since 2025, a series of policies to promote the export of travel services have been implemented and effective, resulting in a significant increase in the number of inbound tourists. The attractiveness of Chinese culture and tourism continues to translate into actual consumption power and international reputation. Keywords: the Belt and Road news, service trade, export

The top-level deployment is to accumulate momentum for the development of the industry. On July 30, 2026, the Central Political Bureau meeting clearly proposed to vigorously develop service trade, expand the space for mutually beneficial international economic and trade cooperation, and promote balanced trade development. Li Jun predicted that China's service trade will continue its high-quality development momentum, and travel services, logistics and transportation, telecommunications and information services, professional services and other fields will become the core support for subsequent growth, relying on policies and industry consolidation, and overlapping the broad market opportunities brought by the joint construction of the the Belt and Road.Editor/Gong Ziwei