Services key to economic upgrading

China will step up efforts to promote the transformation and upgrading of outsourced services, with a view to achieving better structure and higher quality of the services sector, the State Council's executive meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang decided on Friday.

"Developing outsourced services helps keep foreign investment and employment stable, and also contributes to economic upgrading. Though our country started relatively late in outsourced services, we have made fairly fast progress and have our own advantages," Li said.

Friday's meeting decided on steps to build greater capacity in undertaking outsourced services at a faster pace as part of the efforts to facilitate economic upgrading.

Information technology will be applied to promote "Services Plus". New service models such as crowdsourcing, cloud outsourcing and platform subcontracting, and new types of industry such as service-embedded manufacturing will be developed.

Efforts will be made to enhance competitiveness in undertaking outsourced services in pharmaceutical research and development, design and accounting, and to strengthen the capability of contracting and delivering such services.

Trade in services will be further facilitated. Service outsourcing will be gradually included in the "single window" in international trade. In the service outsourcing demonstration cities, materials imported for such service sectors as research and development, design, testing and maintenance will be regulated as bonded goods on a trial basis.

"We must deepen the reform of government functions and further open up the outsourced services sector. A negative list for market access has been formulated. Areas off the list should be opened up as much as possible, and government oversight needs to be accommodating yet prudent to meet the fast-developing trend of the digital economy," Li said.

It was decided at the meeting to revise the catalog of key areas in outsourced services to promote the upgrading toward higher value-added outsourced services and create more jobs for young people, college graduates in particular.

"We must promptly summarize the experience gained in the pilot programs and expand their coverage," Li said.

"Good performance in outsourced services will also help establish Chinese brands."

Data from the Ministry of Commerce show a sound momentum of growth in outsourced services. Between January and July last year, Chinese companies signed service outsourcing contracts worth 722.58 billion yuan ($102.62 billion), up by 7.4 percent year-on-year.