China vows greater efforts to boost service consumption

BEIJING, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) -- A commerce ministry official said Friday that China will promote alignment with high-standard international economic and trade rules and expand opening up to boost the consumption of services.

To improve the supply of services, Tang Wenhong, assistant minister of commerce, told a press conference that the country will expand the catalog of encouraged industries for foreign investment to include more sectors related to service consumption and shorten the negative list for foreign investors' access.

Tang said the country would promote the wider opening up of sectors such as telecommunications, internet, education, culture and medical services. It also vowed to apply and improve the negative list for cross-border trade in services.

Chang Tiewei, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said at the press conference that the country will take boosting service consumption as an important lever to spur consumer spending, and better leverage the role of central government investment funds in promoting the sector.

According to the NDRC data, service consumption accounted for 45.6 percent of the country's per capita consumer spending in the first half of this year, compared with a proportion of 44.5 percent in the previous year.

The increasing national income levels and continued urbanization process will promise greater demand for service consumption, while technological innovation will ensure the supply of new services for consumers, which will all be the drivers for service consumption expansion, according to Chang.