Trade in services, engine for Xi'an's foreign trade growth

The city of Xi'an – capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi province – last year promoted various pilot tasks for comprehensively deepening the innovative development of its trade in services.

As a result, this sector is providing a new impetus for the city's high-level opening-up and a new engine for its growth in foreign trade.

The value of the city's imports and exports in services totaled $1.485 billion last year, a year-on-year increase of 27.2 percent, maintaining high growth for two consecutive years.

Last year, there were 94 countries and regions that had trade in services with Xi'an, an increase of 11 from the previous year.

The top three import and export markets of Xi'an's trade in services were Singapore worth $340 million, the United States worth $310 million and Pakistan worth $180 million.

In addition, the total imports and exports of services between Xi'an and countries and regions involved in the Belt and Road Initiative came in at $990 million, a year-on-year increase of 110.7 percent.

Since last year, Xi'an has stepped up its reforms in areas such as production-oriented services, international education, digital trade and service outsourcing. It has also successively formed 18 innovative achievements related to trade in services.

To date, Xi'an has been approved as five national-level characteristic service export bases in the categories of culture, traditional Chinese medicine, human resources and geographic information.

What's more, it has built three overseas promotion centers for the trade in services in Europe, Kazakhstan and Russia.