China's service trade in the first seven months of 2018 registered an annual growth of 9.9 percent, hitting a record high of 2.95 trillion yuan, according to data released by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) on Wednesday.
From January to July this year, service imports reached 1.98 billion yuan, up 7.7 percent year on year, while the service exports stood at 987.5 billion yuan, an increase of 14.6 percent.
This resulted in a deficit of one trillion yuan.
Trade in services records the value of intangible products, such as tourism, telecommunications, and healthcare among others, exchanged between two countries.
Service trade accounted for 15.1 percent of China's total foreign trade (merchandise trade included), up 0.1 percentage points compared to the same period in the previous year.
The import of emerging services saw rapid gains, with the fastest-growing fields being intellectual property fees, financial services, and telecommunications, computing and information services, at rates of 23.7 percent, 23 percent and 20.6 percent respectively.
Service imports and exports in 15 pilot areas for service trade innovation totaled 1,64 trillion yuan over the same period, accounting for 55.8 percent of the national total, up 19 percent year on year – 9.1 percentage points higher than the national growth rate.
China has been slowly opening up some of its service sectors, including finance, education and health care.