Service industry's opening-up could do with some synergy

After the State Council, China's Cabinet, approved the experimental opening-up and expansion of the service sector in Wuhan, Shenyang, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Chengdu in December, the Ministry of Commerce recently issued an overall program on this project, stressing that each city should form benign interactions between differentiated explorations and practices and the construction of a synergistic opening-up pattern based on respective resource endowment and different regional opening-up levels.

Beijing was the first Chinese city to launch the pilot project by focusing on promoting the modernization of its services and improving the level of service trade. The project then expanded to Tianjin, Shanghai, Hainan and Chongqing. Its latest expansion to six more cities demonstrates China's seriousness about expanding its services opening-up.

Behind this is not only China's need to open up to the outside world at a deeper level to build an open economy, but also its inevitable choice to strengthen the weak links in its service sector, promote optimization and upgrading of its industrial structure, and better stabilize the fundamentals of foreign trade and foreign investment.

The cities allowed to launch the pilot project have both similarities and respective strengths, and only by giving full play to their advantages in innovative reform and opening-up can they accumulate more experience that can be replicated elsewhere, playing an exemplary role in the opening-up of the service sector nationwide.

The overall plan makes it clear that Wuhan should deepen reform and expand opening-up in key service areas such as scientific and technological services, professional services, education services, financial services, health and medical services and cultural services. The plan also encourages Wuhan to build a top software park, an international air cargo system and to be included in the digital renminbi pilot program. At present, the value added of Wuhan's service sector accounts for more than 60 percent of its GDP and the service sector has become an important driving force of its high-quality economic development.

Differentiated explorations and practices based on the development characteristics of each pilot city will not only make the efforts to expand services opening-up more relevant to local conditions, but also promote the effective transformation of the pilot task into a new driving force for local development. We hope all pilot cities can play an exemplary role in promoting opening-up and innovative development of the country's whole service sector.