Recently, the British “Financial Times” published an article focusing on the new developments in China’s foreign trade, pointing out that China has been the world’s largest trader in goods for many consecutive years. At the same time, China’s service exports have shown an accelerated growth trend in recent years, and knowledge-intensive services are becoming a new highlight in the changes in China’s foreign trade.
The article elaborates on China’s current rapidly growing service export areas, which mainly cover information and communication technology, engineering management, construction services, data analysis and research and development, etc. Financial services and intellectual property-related services are also constantly expanding.
According to data from the World Trade Organization, China has jumped from 17th place in the world in 2005 to the world’s sixth largest exporter of digital delivery services.
In 2024, China’s exports of information and communication technology services will reach US$100 billion, exceeding traditional export commodities such as toys and footwear; exports of “other commercial services” including consulting services, research and development, and technology will reach US$113 billion, which is also higher than the export scale of some traditional commodities such as steel and clothing.
The “Financial Times” believes that this change is closely linked to China’s continued promotion of cooperation in jointly building the “Belt and Road”.
Relevant cooperation has not only strongly promoted the export of goods such as steel, cement and heavy equipment, but also led to the development of knowledge-intensive services around operations management, digital monitoring, technical training, maintenance agreements, software upgrades and cloud service support required for port, railway and power station operations.
As the added value of exports of products such as electric vehicles, robots, drones, solar panels and wind power equipment continues to increase, the export of knowledge-intensive services has also increased.
These products are generally highly digitalized and often require support such as software upgrades, remote monitoring, cloud connections and technical maintenance after export, further promoting the export of knowledge-intensive services.
In the field of artificial intelligence, Chinese open source large models represented by DeepSeek are continuing to expand their overseas influence.
With lower costs and easier access to usage thresholds, Chinese large language models have received widespread attention in emerging markets such as Africa and the Middle East.
The increased application of relevant models may further drive demand for services such as predictive maintenance, data analysis and smart infrastructure management, thus forming strong support for the export of knowledge-intensive services.
The “Financial Times” pointed out that China’s foreign trade structure is undergoing new changes.
Different from relying more on commodity exports in the past, the proportion of technology, digital systems and supporting services in foreign trade is gradually increasing.
As China’s leading technology companies continue to be favored, more Chinese companies are accelerating their integration into global knowledge-intensive trade, which is expected to further expand growth space and inject new impetus into the sustainable development of China’s foreign trade.
