Tourists enjoy spring outings, flower viewing, and camping in a park in Suqian, East China's Jiangsu Province, on April 1, 2026. Photo: VCG

China's State Council on Tuesday issued a guideline on expanding capacity and improving quality in the service sector, aiming to better support industrial upgrading, meet people's livelihood needs, and expand employment over the next five years. Analysts said that the strategic plan will further advance China's economic structural transformation and high-quality growth, while creating broader opportunities for global cooperation.

The document makes clear that by 2030, the sector's total output is expected to surpass 100 trillion yuan ($14.67 trillion), with a development pattern characterized by higher quality, more optimized structure, improved standards and stronger vitality basically taking shape.

It also calls for fostering more "China service" brands, significantly enhancing the sector's global competitiveness and influence, and steadily improving the public's sense of gain.

To achieve these goals, the guideline urges efforts to move producer services toward greater specialization and higher value-added segments of the value chain, while promoting high-quality, diversified and more convenient development of consumer services.

The new guideline comes as a series of recent policy and market signals indicates that the shift toward high-quality growth of the service sector is being put on a faster track, as China's economy enters a new phase of high-quality development.

In producer services, the document identifies six priority areas to shore up weak links across the entire industrial chain: strengthening the support role of science and technology services, enhancing the overall competitiveness of modern logistics, accelerating innovation in software and information services, improving specialized supply chain financial services, promoting the development of energy-saving and environmental services, and upgrading business services.

"This is a top-level design with a clear strategic orientation, targeting key weak links in China's economic structure that urgently need to be strengthened," Song Ding, a research fellow at the China Development Institute, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Song said that while China has built a globally leading manufacturing system, significant room remains to upgrade its service sector, particularly modern services. "This strategy will not only consolidate existing industrial strengths, but also provide a necessary pathway to enhancing China's global industrial competitiveness and influence," he said.

On science and technology services, the guideline further details measures such as fostering leading industrial design firms, enhancing professional capabilities and international standards, and building incubators for emerging industries and industries of the future.

It also specifies steps to advance software and information services, such as accelerating the application of intelligent programming tools, supporting the procurement of large models and intelligent agent services, fostering data cooperation alliances, and building high-quality industry datasets.

With China's high-end manufacturing advancing rapidly, demand for producer services such as research and development (R&D), finance and supply chain management has surged. Song said that upgrading these services and deepening integration with global industrial chains will strengthen China's role and rule-setting capacity in global value chains.

On the consumer side, the guideline also calls for increasing the supply of high-quality household services, improving the adaptability of eldercare and childcare services, enhancing the professionalism of health services, and innovating models in culture, tourism and sports services.

Analysts said that the measures reflect a national strategy of "investing in people," which will improve the quality of life through better services while helping unlock consumption potential, expand service consumption, and support domestic demand and structural upgrading.

In the outline of its 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) approved by the top legislature last month, China pledged to further advance reform and opening-up in the service sector, refine policy support, and comprehensively enhance its quality, efficiency and competitiveness.

China's service industry strengthened its role as a key growth driver in the first quarter, with its value-added output accounting for 61.7 percent of GDP and contributing 63.2 percent to overall economic growth, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday, citing the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

"Since the beginning of this year, operating revenues in major service industries have generally grown at a relatively fast pace, with services enterprises showing a trend of digital technology empowerment and accelerated growth in consumption-driven services," an NBS official said.

Official data also showed that producer services have become an important force driving industrial transformation and upgrading. In the first quarter, the value added of information transmission, software and information technology services rose 10.6 percent year-on-year, while fixed-asset investment in high-tech services increased 12.3 percent.

Meanwhile, consumer services continued to unleash strong consumption potential. In the first quarter, services retail sales grew 5.5 percent year-on-year, 3.3 percentage points faster than the retail sales of goods.

On the international front, the guideline calls for efforts such as advancing the establishment of international industry and standards bodies, promoting the global adoption of Chinese standards, expanding opening-up in areas such as value-added telecommunications, biotechnology and wholly foreign-owned hospitals, and strengthening services trade cooperation with key countries and regions.

China's service trade deficit reached 828.72 billion yuan in 2025, driven by steady imports of high-quality services to meet domestic demand, according to the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM).

Song emphasized that deeper opening-up of the service sector will not only drive upgrading in manufacturing and growth in strategic emerging industries, but also create more room and opportunities for foreign investment in high value-added sectors.