A robot is on display at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference. Photo: Wu Xue

China's services trade totaled 3.779 trillion yuan ($560 billion) in the first half of 2026, up 8.3 percent year-on-year, a trend that a Chinese industry analyst said highlights the growing momentum of China's new quality productive forces.

According to data released by China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) on Tuesday, China's services exports reached 1.504 trillion yuan in the first half of the year, up 17.6 percent year-on-year. Services imports also grew.

Notably, knowledge-intensive services accounted for more than half of the country's services exports. Imports and exports of knowledge-intensive services totaled 1.663 trillion yuan, up 6.7 percent year-on-year, accounting for 44 percent of the country's total services trade, according to the MOFCOM.

Knowledge-intensive services exports reached 805.67 billion yuan, up 12.8 percent year-on-year, accounting for 53.5 percent of total services exports. Among them, exports of personal cultural and entertainment services and charges for the use of intellectual property recorded the fastest growth.

These figures show that China's growing technological capabilities are driving rapid growth in services trade, Li Changan, a professor at the Academy of China Open Economy Studies at the University of International Business and Economics, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Li said that exports in high-tech fields, including technology services and intellectual property, have maintained a steady upward trajectory in recent years, reflecting rising global demand for Chinese innovation.

The growth of China's services exports also reflects the transformation of services trade from traditional labor-intensive and resource-dependent sectors toward technology-driven, knowledge-intensive and innovation-led services. Li said that "such a shift reflects the upgrading of China's foreign trade structure and its transition toward high-quality development, as the country advances the development of new quality productive forces during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30)."

China's services trade has seen an upward trend. Liu Tao, deputy director of the Market Economy Research Institute at the Development Research Center of the State Council, the cabinet, told media outlets that China ranked second globally in terms of services trade scale in 2025, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

China's services exports grew at an average annual rate of 14 percent over the past five years, with the scale in 2025 nearly doubling from that of 2020, the International Business Daily reported.

China's services imports have also maintained steady growth, reflecting the country's expanding domestic demand and higher level of opening-up. The strong performance of both exports and imports has made services trade one of the fastest-growing segments of China's foreign trade, industry data shows.

According to a report published on the official website of the World Economic Forum, China's services trade expanded at a much faster pace than goods trade. Between 2021 and 2025, services exports surged 83 percent and services imports rose 65 percent, far outpacing the 48 percent growth in goods exports and the 32 percent increase in goods imports.

Services trade will play a greater role in China's foreign trade, becoming an important indicator of the country's shift toward a more innovation-driven trade structure, Li said.