BEIJING: China has rolled out a set of guidelines to upgrade its services sector, where significant consumption potential remains to be unlocked to help rebalance the world’s second-largest economy and sustain its long-term growth, economists and executives said.
For Chinese consumers, the shift promises more choice, higher quality and greater convenience, they noted. For domestic and foreign service providers alike, China’s fast-expanding services market means broader development opportunities.
In late April, the State Council, China’s Cabinet, released plans to improve the capacity and quality of the services sector, with the goal of growing its total scale to 100 trillion yuan ($14.65 trillion) by 2030.
Dedicated efforts will be made to steer producer services toward “greater specialization and higher positions in the value chain”, according to the plans, while making consumer services “more quality-oriented, diversified and convenient”.
More “China services brands” will be fostered by 2030, with the sector’s global competitiveness and influence significantly enhanced, and people’s sense of gain steadily improving, the plans said.
In recent times, China has attached greater importance to the development of its services sector. The country held its first national conference on the services sector in early April, while its latest five-year plan also calls for improving the sector’s quality, efficiency and competitiveness.
China’s services sector has achieved steady growth in recent years, with its value-added reaching 80.9 trillion yuan in 2025, accounting for 57.7 percent of GDP and contributing 61.4 percent to economic growth, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.
Enhancing producer services has become a central pillar of China’s services sector development, with executives pointing to significant untapped potential that could boost growth and drive industrial transformation.
China’s producer services sector, which includes logistics, finance, R&D, design and IT services, accounted for less than 35 percent of GDP in 2025, said Jean Lu, Standard Chartered Bank’s CEO for China, noting that in advanced economies, that figure typically ranges from 40 to 50 percent.
“This gap indicates that China’s manufacturing supply chains still have substantial room to extend into service-related activities, offering considerable growth potential for the economy,” Lu said.
Xu Shaofeng, senior vice-president of Schneider Electric, said that the services sector can help manufacturing move toward higher-end, smarter and greener production through technology empowerment, value enhancement and business model innovation.
This, in turn, boosts product value, brand visibility and supply chain efficiency, while manufacturing upgrading creates even broader space for service providers, Xu said.
“Many companies now face challenges in their transformation, making their need for professional services more urgent than ever. Services have shifted from a ‘nice-to-have’ to a ‘must-have’ for competitiveness and value creation,” Xu added. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
