China's service trade fell in 2020 due to the COVID-19 epidemic and other factors, but the trade deficit continued to narrow sharply, data from the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) showed on Thursday.
The country's total service trade volume reached over 4.56 trillion yuan (about 705.83 billion U.S. dollars) last year, down 15.7 percent year on year, said MOC spokesperson Gao Feng, at a press conference.
Gao said the country's service exports outperformed imports, with the service trade deficit narrowing by 53.9 percent year on year to 692.93 billion yuan in 2020.
The MOC highlighted strong growth in China's trade of knowledge-intensive services, which increased by 8.3 percent year on year in the period, accounting for 44.5 percent of the total trade in services.
Sectors such as telecommunications, computer and information services saw rapid increases in both exports and imports, according to the MOC.
Tourism services worldwide were still significantly impacted by the epidemic, which is the main reason behind the drop in total service trade. Last year, the tourism service trade volume slumped by 48.3 percent to 1.02 trillion yuan.
Excluding the tourism sector, the country's service trade in 2020 expanded by 2.9 percent year on year, the MOC said.
In contrast to goods trade, trade in services refers to the sale and delivery of intangible products such as transportation, tourism, telecommunications, construction, advertising, computing and accounting.
