Xi emphasizes high quality in services sector

President Xi Jinping has called for building more "China Services" brands and breaking new ground in advancing the high-quality development of China's services sector.

He made the remarks in an instruction conveyed at a national conference on the services sector, which was held in Beijing on Tuesday and Wednesday.

China's services sector has steadily expanded in scale and continuously improved in quality and efficiency, playing an important role in supporting industrial upgrade, meeting people's livelihood needs and driving job growth, Xi said.

Official statistics showed that China's value-added services output rose 5.4 percent year-on-year to 80.89 trillion yuan ($11.8 trillion) in 2025, with the sector contributing 61.4 percent of the country's overall economic growth.

Underscoring demand-driven development, reform breakthroughs and technology empowerment, as well as opening-up and cooperation, Xi called for carrying out capacity-expanding and quality-upgrading initiatives in the services sector.

He stressed that efforts should be made to advance producer services toward greater specialization and the higher end of the value chain, and to foster high-quality, diverse and accessible consumer services.

Producer services and consumer services are the two pillars of the services sector. The index gauging China's services industry output rose 5.2 percent year-on-year in the first two months of this year, an increase of 0.2 percentage point from December, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Addressing the conference, Premier Li Qiang underlined the need to adapt to shifts in demographic structure, consumption upgrades and industrial transformation.

He said efforts should focus on key areas of production and daily life, adding that it is crucial to promote the development of the services sector in a tiered and categorized manner, constantly cultivate new growth drivers, and foster a services sector that is digital, intelligent, standardized, integrated and internationally competitive.

In his closing speech at the conference, Vice-Premier Ding Xue­xiang called for efforts to advance the building of a unified national market, enhance the standardization of the services sector and expand institutional opening-up in services.

He emphasized efforts to strengthen and upgrade modern logistics, financial services and commercial services, in order to ensure smooth and coordinated flows across all links of the economy. Efforts will be made to meet people's livelihood needs, make daily services more convenient and public services more efficient and adaptable, and drive innovative development in culture, tourism, sports and other services, to better satisfy personalized, diversified and high-quality demand, Ding added.

Edward Hu, president for China at International Workplace Group, a Switzerland-based hybrid workspace platform, expressed confidence in the prospects of China's services sector, citing the country's sustained commitment to its high-quality development and further improvements in the business environment.

He said that China's continued opening of the services sector and efforts to improve the business environment are key drivers of growth. Policy support for services consumption and urban development continues to sustain demand for flexible office space, he added.

Luo Zhiheng, chief economist at Yuekai Securities, said that promoting the high-quality development of services consumption requires a systematic and well-coordinated policy mix, with efforts focused on two key fronts — ensuring income stability to bolster demand and improving the quality of services to enhance supply.

He called for easing market access while strengthening regulation in sectors such as cultural tourism, healthcare and education.

jihaisheng@chinadaily.com.cn