China's service trade up 7.7% in first nine months

BEIJING - China's service trade value grew 7.7 percent year-on-year in the first nine months of this year, data from the Ministry of Commerce showed on Wednesday.

The service trade value hit 4.82 trillion yuan ($672 billion) during the January-September period.

Of the total, service imports climbed 22.4 percent year-on-year to 2.85 trillion yuan, while service exports fell 8.2 percent from a year ago to 1.97 trillion yuan.

During the same period, knowledge-intensive service trade hit 2.03 trillion yuan, up 8.6 percent year-on-year. Its share in the nation's total service trade rose to 42 percent, up 0.4 percentage points from a year ago.

Meanwhile, tourism services continued to recover, with the value of tourism services reaching 1.05 trillion yuan during the period, up 69 percent year-on-year, the data showed.