The 2024 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS), themed “Global Services, Shared Prosperity,” was inaugurated in Beijing on Thursday. Since its inception in 2012, CIFTIS has become a symbol of the Chinese mainland’s high-level opening up, building bridges for participants to deepen communication and promote development. It injects strong momentum into globalization and contributes to stable global economic growth.
Fostering new industries, models, and growth drivers—developing new quality productive forces characterized by advanced technology, high efficiency, and quality—is key to achieving China’s high-quality economic development. Against the backdrop of a technological revolution, a highlight of this year’s CIFTIS is its emphasis on nurturing innovative growth drivers and integrating trade in services with advanced manufacturing, thereby empowering the development of new quality productive forces.
Exhibitions at this year’s CIFTIS showcase new technologies such as satellite internet, big data, computing power, and low-carbon technologies, along with their applications in trade in services. Innovations include dual-lens cameras used in smart maintenance equipment, BeiDou high-precision positioning, wireless communication devices, and intelligent recognition algorithms. The latest models of new energy vehicles and technological advancements from major automotive brands are also on display. These exhibits reflect the enormous potential of trade in productive services to empower integrated development of the secondary and tertiary sectors.
CIFTIS also presents new service models and scenarios such as digital cultural tourism, smart education, and intelligent sports. Visitors can experience virtual reality technology to tour the Great Wall or traverse the Beijing Central Axis, participate in AI-guided Ba Duan Jin (one of the most popular Qigong practices), and enjoy diverse robot performances. These applications demonstrate the innovation of lifestyle-related trade in services and its contribution to expanding consumer demand.
Looking ahead, China’s development of new quality productive forces will involve drawing on valuable experiences from around the world while expanding international exchanges and collaboration in science and technology, economy and trade, and industry. To achieve this, China is set to open its doors wider to the world, leveraging both domestic and international markets to enhance the quality of its economic development and contribute further to global economic growth.
China plans to improve its systems and mechanisms for high-level opening up, innovatively upgrade trade in services, proactively align with high-standard international economic and trade rules, and promote compatibility with regulations, standards, and management in the service area. The Chinese government will also expand the opening of its service market in an orderly manner, enhance the functionality of open platforms for the service sector and its trade, and create a world-class business environment that is market-oriented, law-based, and internationalized.
