Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for efforts to achieve new breakthroughs in the high-quality development of China's service sector. Xi Jinping, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks in an instruction delivered at a national conference on the service sector held in Beijing from Tuesday to Wednesday.

Since the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of China, he said, the service sector in China has been expanding steadily in scale and continuously improving in quality and efficiency, playing an important role in promoting industrial upgrading, meeting people's needs and creating jobs.

Xi stressed the importance of demand-driven development, reform breakthroughs, technological strengthening as well as opening up and cooperation. He called for initiatives aimed at expanding capacity and improving quality in the services sector.

He said it is necessary to promote greater specialisation of production services and their shift to higher links in the value chain, develop high-quality, diverse and affordable consumer services, and build more „China Services“ brands.

The conference was also addressed by the Prime Minister Li Qiang a vicepremiér Ding Xuexiang, both members of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Li Qiang said that the important instructions of General Secretary Xi Jinping deeply clarify the significance, key principles and major tasks of the development of the service sector. He stressed the need to view the sector from a strategic and holistic perspective in order to better support its quality and effective development.

He also stressed the need to adapt to structural trends such as demographic change, modernisation of consumption and industrial transformation and to continuously create new growth impulses. The development of the services sector should aim for a higher level of digitisation, intelligence, standardisation, integration and internationalisation.

Li called for expanding the availability of quality services that meet the basic needs of residents, developing higher-level services and strengthening personalized services. He also stressed the importance of promoting services for the technology sector and advanced manufacturing.

He also called for actively expanding the opening to the world and providing more targeted and effective policy support to create an enabling environment for the development of the services sector.

In his closing speech, Vice-Premier Ding Xuexiang called for the consistent implementation of the main tasks of service sector development, stressing the need to promote innovation, reduce costs, increase efficiency, meet people's needs and strengthen market vitality.

He also urged relevant regions and institutions to correctly understand the performance evaluation and ensure the effective implementation of the decisions and measures taken by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council.

The value-added output of China's services sector exceeded 80 trillion yuan (approximately $11.65 trillion) last year and accounted for 57.7 % of GDP. The sector contributed 61.4 % to economic growth, up 3.7 percentage points from 2024, and provided about half of total employment.

Under the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), which was approved last month, China committed to further deepen reform and opening-up in the service sector, improve policy support, and comprehensively strengthen its quality, efficiency and competitiveness.

According to the National Development and Reform Commission, the service sector is expected to exceed 100 trillion yuan in the period 2026-2030.

CMG