A woman gives a baby model a bath as part of a household services competition held in Haikou, capital of South China's Hainan Province on Tuesday. China's household services industry had more than 600,000 enterprises and hired about 25 million people, creating a value of more than 1 trillion yuan ($160.6 billion) in 2013, according to China Home Service Association. Photo: CFP

China will step up efforts promoting the transformation and upgrading of outsourced services to achieve better structure and higher quality in the service industry, the State Council's executive meeting, chaired by Premier Li Keqiang, decided on Friday.

Premier Li Keqiang stressed the significance of growing high-tech and high-value-added outsourced services to advance structural adjustments and drive industrial upgrading.

Ministry of Commerce data shows a sound momentum of growth in the outsourced services. Between January and July last year, Chinese firms signed service outsourcing contracts worth 722.58 billion yuan (about $102.62 billion), up by 7.4 percent year-on-year.

"Developing outsourced services helps keep foreign investment and employment stable, and also contributes to economic upgrading. Though our country started relatively late in outsourced services, we have made fairly fast progress and have our own advantages," Li said.

The Friday meeting decided on steps to build greater outsourced services capacity at a faster pace as part of the effort to facilitate economic upgrading.

Information technology will be applied to promote "Services Plus." New service models such as crowdsourcing, cloud outsourcing and platform subcontracting, as well as new types of industry such as service-embedded manufacturing will be developed. Efforts will be made to enhance competitiveness in outsourced services such as pharmaceutical research and development, design and accounting. The State Council also plan steps to strengthen the capability of contracting and delivering such services.

 In service outsourcing demonstration cities, materials imported for such service sectors as research and development, design, testing and maintenance shall be regulated as bonded goods on a trial basis.

"We must deepen the reform of government functions and further open up the outsourced services sector. A negative list for market access has been formulated. Areas off the list should be opened up as much as possible, and government oversight needs to be accommodating yet prudent to meet the fast-developing trend of the digital economy," Li said.

Revising the catalog of key areas in outsourced services to promote upgrades and create more jobs for young people was also decided at the meeting."We must promptly summarize the experience gained in the pilot programs and expand their coverage," Li said. "Good performance in outsourced services will also help build our domestic brands."