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Cultivating more ‘China Service’ brands_我的网站

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    Staff members train a robot to work in a retail scenario at Maniformer, a physical AI data service platform, in Shanghai, east China, Aug. 5, 2026. In Shanghai's tech companies like AGIBOT and Maniformer, embodied intelligence robots are trained in household, retail, sorting, production and other real-world scenarios, to advance their AI capabilities for real-life use. (Xinhua/Chen Haoming)
Nation's value added in the service sector grew 5.2 percent year-on-year, 0.5 percentage points faster than overall economic growth. Retail sales of services rose 5.3 percent year-on-year. In the first half of the year, the service sector expanded steadily, playing an important role in supporting industrial upgrading and meeting people's livelihood needs.
A meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee held on July 30 called for effectively expanding domestic demand and optimizing supply.
From April 7 to 8, a national conference on the service sector was held in Beijing — the first national gathering in the new era devoted to the service sector.
General Secretary Xi Jinping called for advancing producer services toward greater specialization and the higher end of the value chain, fostering high-quality, diverse and accessible consumer services, and building more "China Services" brands, as well as striving to break new ground in the high-quality development of China's service sector.
Beijing convened a municipal service sector conference and pledged to actively shape the "Beijing Services" brand.
Shanghai released its 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) for service sector development, aiming to comprehensively enhance the global reach and international competitiveness of "Shanghai Services."
Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality set out to build a modern service industry system and burnish "golden calling cards" of service development such as "Chongqing Trade Global."
Since the national conference, regions and departments have coordinated their planning and accelerated the building of service brands. By 2030, China's service sector is expected to top 100 trillion yuan ($14.6 trillion) in total scale, with higher quality, a better structure and improved standards.
With that target in sight, the Chinese economy is undergoing a fresh "system upgrade."
I
Building more "China Services" brands is an inevitable choice that follows the laws of economic development and drives economic transformation and upgrading.
China's service sector has steadily expanded in scale and continuously improved in quality and efficiency since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, playing an important role in supporting industrial upgrading, meeting people's livelihood needs and driving job growth, according to Xi.
Scale is the most direct yardstick. In the first half of this year, the service sector accounted for 59.5 percent of GDP, making it the largest sector of the national economy, and contributed 66.1 percent to economic growth, emerging as the main engine of expansion. The figures reflect the sector's weight in high-quality development and in Chinese modernization as a whole.
The Chinese economy sits at a critical window as it shifts from factor-driven to innovation-driven growth, and from investment-led to consumption-led expansion. Projections show that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, the service sector's contribution to GDP growth will rise steadily, making it the economy's main engine in every sense.
This is also where the key lies in answering people's expectations for a better life and in expanding domestic demand.
The changing Engel coefficient traces the leap in household consumption. At the start of reform and opening-up, the Engel coefficient for Chinese households exceeded 60 percent; in 2025 it stood at just 29.3 percent. The sharp drop in the share of spending on food has freed up vast room for consumption of services such as education, health, culture and tourism.
Global experience shows that once a country's per capita GDP passes $10,000, its consumption structure typically shifts markedly, with services taking a rapidly rising share. China is now in that critical transition. Consumption is moving from "subsistence consumption," geared mainly to basic needs, toward "development-oriented consumption" that seeks quality, experience and self-fulfilment.
From the breakout popularity of the Jiangsu Football City League and the Village Super League to the growing craze for "traveling to catch a show"; from the rapid spread of service points for the elderly and young children to 30-minute delivery of just about anything becoming the norm — service consumption is no longer an optional garnish but a necessity of a better life. With a middle-income group of more than 400 million, China is entering a golden period for expanding the capacity and quality of its service sector.
It is also a key step toward raising total factor productivity and developing new quality productive forces.
Take a garment company. In R&D, AI-assisted design can shorten development cycles. In production, intelligent transformation and digital upgrading can sharply lift efficiency. In distribution, modern logistics can cut overall costs. In sales, market analytics can match products precisely to customer segments.
Globally, as industries divide labor more deeply and integrate faster, leading manufacturers are broadly shifting toward service-oriented manufacturing, drawing on strengths in information, finance, R&D and design to dominate the construction of global value chains. Producer services play an increasingly prominent role in production networks, and largely determine whether product value can extend toward both ends of the "smile curve."
As the world's largest manufacturing nation, China still sees producer services account for less than 35 percent of GDP in value added, leaving gaps in scale, quality and efficiency compared with advanced international levels. Upgrading the service sector is key to moving from a manufacturer of quantity to one of quality.
II
In building more "China Services" brands, tailoring measures to local conditions and applying targeted policies is the basic methodology.
Underscoring demand-driven development, reform breakthroughs, technology empowerment as well as opening-up and cooperation, Xi called for carrying out capacity-expanding and quality-upgrading initiatives in the service sector.
The service sector spans many categories and takes many forms; its subsectors differ in their levels of development and the challenges they face.
Start with producer services, these must serve enterprises across the full span of production and operations, with the aim of firmly supporting industrial transformation and upgrading by shoring up weak links along the entire chain.
Among these, the deep integration of advanced manufacturing and modern services — the so-called integration of the two sectors — is one of the core propositions of current industrial policy. For a long time, manufacturing and services have operated on parallel tracks, belonging to different policy systems, statistical classifications and regulatory frameworks.
Breaking down this divide requires embedding services into every pore of manufacturing, and the breakthrough lies in data and policy. On one hand, the industrial internet should serve as the link that connects data silos, drawing service firms to develop specialized, manufacturing-oriented services on a data foundation and forming an ecosystem of "data flow — embedded services — value creation." On the other, statistical and policy systems need reform: drawing on international experience, service units inside manufacturers should be able to keep separate accounts and enjoy service-sector policy benefits, giving the integration of the two sectors a clear policy foothold.
Turn to consumer services. At their core, these address people's needs across the full life cycle, with the aim of better meeting aspirations for a better life by raising the development level of key consumer service areas.
Take elderly care and childcare. Demand is moving up from basic provision toward inclusive and even mid- to high-end services, and it is broadening: expectations now span facilities, services, and material and emotional needs alike. Supply-side structural strains are equally acute. In some big cities, beds at high-quality elderly care institutions are nearly impossible to secure, while many beds sit empty at township homes for the elderly. Places at standardized chain childcare centers are hard to come by, even as some small childcare providers struggle to stay in business.
Faced with strains that are multilayered and varied, only precise disaggregation and tiered policies can deliver genuine quality upgrades.
At the baseline, the government should take the lead in improving the three-tier elderly care network across counties, townships and villages, reinforcing the social safety net. At the middle tier, the government should guide the way — using investment, tax and fee incentives, resource guarantees and institutional reform to mobilize more social forces, so that more families can access elderly care and childcare that is affordable, reliable in quality and safe. At the upper tier, industrial policy and a better business environment should support market players in providing personalized and customized services.
III
Building more "China Services" brands means seizing the initiative through the newness of innovation and winning reputation through the substance of quality.
Building more "China Services" brands requires deepening institutional opening-up.
Brands are forged only in open competition. However, barriers in goods trade sit mainly "at the border" — tariffs and customs clearance — while barriers in services trade are more often hidden "behind the border," in market access rules, regulatory systems, qualification recognition and the mutual recognition of professional credentials.
China needs to keep refining the negative list for the service sector and further trim its scope, so that it becomes a genuinely predictable and workable opening-up commitment. It also needs to improve regulatory transparency and consistency, align regulatory rules with prevailing international practice, and reduce hidden barriers. At the same time, cross-border mutual recognition of professional credentials for engineers, physicians and others should be actively advanced, allowing high-end service talent to move freely.
Building more "China Services" brands also means that, as the saying goes, it takes a good blacksmith to forge good iron.
A recent piece of news drew global attention: Mixue Ice Cream & Tea has grown to nearly 60,000 stores worldwide, becoming a food and beverage chain of broad global influence.
Behind Mixue's success lies an intelligent supply chain system. At the front end, it converts consumption data into planting data, guiding farmers to produce to order. In the middle, an intelligent scheduling system coordinates nearly 30 warehouses nationwide, with cold chain coverage reaching more than 97 percent of stores. At the tail end, algorithms provide precise support for choosing store locations. Foreign media have remarked that the chain store's mascot "Snow King" will turn up in your city sooner or later.
Differentiated competition among service brands, in the end, comes down to a contest of innovation capability. For "China Services" brands to truly stand firm, make a name and travel far, they must seize the initiative through the newness of innovation, pushing continuous breakthroughs in service models, technologies and consumption scenarios, and win reputation through the substance of quality.
From selling products to selling services, from "Made in China" to "China Services" — as a 100-trillion-yuan service landscape slowly unfolds, there is reason to believe that these gleaming "China Services" calling cards will converge into powerful momentum for the high-quality development of the Chinese economy.
This was compiled from an article originally published on the front page of the People's Daily on August 13, 2026.
。         Francesco Faiola
Editor's Note:
Ahead of the opening of the 2026 World AI Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance, Chinese AI start-up Moonshot AI released its Kimi K3 large language model. As the world's largest open-source model by parameter count to date, this launch marks a significant step forward in the development of China's artificial intelligence models.
From the C919 airliner soaring into the skies to Unitree's humanoid robots stealing the show; from DeepSeek pushing the AI frontier to Moonshot AI's landmark unveiling of Kimi K3 - China's wave of homegrown innovations has dominated global headlines in recent years, delivering a steady stream of breakthroughs.
At a meeting in Beijing that brought together the national science and technology award conference, the general assemblies of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), and the 11th national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology in July, Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, stressed that the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030) is a critical phase for tackling tough challenges in building up the country's strength in science and technology.
"We must seize the historic opportunity, rise to the challenges of the times, accelerate efforts to achieve high-level self-reliance and strength in science and technology, and make steady progress toward the 2035 goal of becoming a leading country in science and technology," he said.
In the article "Strive for Greater Strength and Self-Reliance in Science and Technology" included in the fourth volume of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, Xi pointed out, "Through years of endeavor, our country's overall strength in science and technology has improved substantially. We therefore have a solid foundation, and are fully confident in our ability to seize the opportunities offered by the new revolution in science, technology and industry to achieve greater results." The article also mentioned that "We should participate to the full in global science and technology governance, contribute Chinese wisdom, and shape a philosophy of technology for good purposes, so that science and technology better serve human wellbeing, and enable China's science and technology industry to contribute more to building a global community of shared future."
In the 27th installment of the special series "Decoding the Book Xi Jinping: The Governance of China," the Global Times, along with the People's Daily Overseas Edition, continues to invite Chinese and foreign scholars, translators of Xi's works, practitioners with firsthand experience, and international readers to focus on the theme of striving for greater strength and self-reliance in science and technology. Together, they share views on China's tech growth, governance principles, and global cooperation in science and technology.
In the 27th article of the "Readers' Reflections" column, Global Times (GT) talked to Francesco Faiola (Faiola), an Italian professor at the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences with Chinese Academy of Sciences and recipient of the Chinese Government Friendship Award.
GT: Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the 2026 World AI Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance on July 17. He said that as a responsible major country, China is always committed to providing international public goods relating to AI. In the article "Boost Basic Research and Achieve Greater Strength and Self-Reliance in Science and Technology" included in the fifth volume of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, Xi said, "It is important that we adopt a more open-minded approach to international exchange and cooperation in research to create an open, globally competitive innovation ecosystem." Amid the current complex global landscape, China remains firmly committed to keeping its doors open to international scientific collaboration. In your view, where does China's confidence in this commitment come from?
Faiola: I think China's confidence in staying open comes from a deep shift in mindset. The Chinese people, especially the scientific community, now really believe they are not inferior to Westerners. For a long time, even many people here thought top science had to happen at a Western address. When I first came, I believed that too. The US and Europe seemed like the only serious places for breakthroughs. Now that idea is changing, and moving toward China, because the evidence of leadership is everywhere: stem cell standards, artificial intelligence (AI) efficiency, green manufacturing. It's undeniable. China knows it has everything needed to attract and keep international talent. It's no longer a developing country playing catch up. It's a place that's helping set the global agenda.
That self-assurance is the bedrock of openness. When you truly believe you have unique strengths, like a huge organoid screening capability or a community of scientists who think deeply, you don't fear open doors. You want colleagues from everywhere to walk through so the science moves faster. My own lab works with European centers as equals. That parity is real. But we also know not everyone abroad gets this transformation yet. A lot of people still imagine Chinese science as just following others. That's exactly why China is pushing openness harder: funding lines for foreign principal investigators, open innovation hubs in Beijing, active participation in setting international standards. These aren't defensive moves. They're proof of a country confident enough to invite the world in, show what it can do, and create knowledge together.
On a deeper level, the confidence is also just rational. The big challenges - environmental problem, pandemic preparedness and precision medicine - are global. If China closed itself off, the data and validation its own regulators need would get weaker. So, the open door isn't charity. It's the smart recognition that scientific greatness today gets multiplied when you share it.
GT: In the article "Strive for Greater Strength and Self-Reliance in Science and Technology" included in the fourth volume of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, Xi pointed out, "Through years of endeavor, our country's overall strength in science and technology has improved substantially. We therefore have a solid foundation, and are fully confident in our ability to seize the opportunities offered by the new revolution in science, technology and industry to achieve greater results." From the domestically built large passenger jet to DeepSeek, Unitree Robotics, and Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, China's innovation achievements have been making headlines. How do you assess China's achievements in sci-tech innovation in recent years? 

Faiola: I measure China's innovation success in a very personal way. My parents are old, living in a small Italian town. They don't speak English. They don't understand molecular biology. They can't read a scientific paper. But over the past few years, they've called me up more than once, excited, telling me about a Chinese airplane or a humanoid robot or some AI breakthrough they saw on Italy's main TV news or in the newspapers.
That tells me something deep. These aren't niche stories for tech insiders. They are real global news, landing in the living rooms of retirees who barely use a smartphone. I'm not bragging to them about China's progress. They are telling me. When achievements get that far into everyday European life, it's a sign China is doing something the world finds worth talking about.
The C919 plane, DeepSeek, Unitree Robotics - these aren't one-off hits. They prove China can now conceive, design, and build complex, original systems on its own, whether it's an airliner, an advanced AI model, or an agile robot. That takes deep integration across different fields, aerodynamics, materials, real time control, and AI.
DeepSeek's whole philosophy, doing more with less, is exactly how we created affordable organoid screening tools. And the quiet shift from rule taker to rule maker in chemical safety standards, that mirrors the C919's ambition to compete globally on certification. All this shows China is blending manufacturing, digital smarts, and biology into one force. But my real proof is what I hear from my students. They don't just apply discoveries from papers anymore. They question the assumptions behind them. That intellectual confidence, and the fact it echoes all the way back to a small Italian town, is why I'm sure China will fully seize this moment.
GT: President Xi said that AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation. Having conducted research in China for many years, you are not only a witness but also a driving force behind China-Europe scientific exchanges. Looking ahead, how can both sides deepen complementary advantages and achieve mutually beneficial empowerment to jointly address global challenges such as climate change and health? Over the next five years, which specific sectors should China-Europe science and technology collaboration prioritize?
Faiola: I grew up in Italy and now I lead a lab in Beijing while working with colleagues all over Europe. So, China-Europe teamwork isn't some abstract idea to me. It's how my week actually looks. The old cliché, European basic research plus Chinese scale and speed, is already outdated. Both sides now generate novel insights. The relationship has to become genuine two-way cocreation.
I see three practical things that would deepen it. First, we need truly joint funding: one grant, one integrated team, maybe a Max Planck group and a Chinese Academy of Sciences group, with a single scientific plan and students who genuinely rotate between the labs. Second, we need to harmonize regulations and ethics for organoid technologies. Europe has advanced thinking on governance. China has manufacturing scale and the drive to get things into clinics. If we co-develop shared quality and ethical standards for organoid testing, we basically set the global benchmark. A liver organoid made in Europe could then be used directly for a toxicity screen in China without repeating all the validation. Third, we need deliberate talent circulation, not a zero-sum competition. Joint PhD programs where a student naturally moves between continents.
The science doesn't care about borders. If we build the shared tools now, China and Europe can show the world a model where shared knowledge beats division.
GT: Recently, some Western media and think tanks are peddling "China Shock 2.0," claiming that China is achieving fast development in high-tech sectors such as renewable energy and AI and relies on foreign markets to absorb its overcapacity, thus reducing the market share of developed countries and sending more serious shock waves to the global economy compared with the era of traditional manufacture industry. What's your comment on this? In your view, does this represent a new pretext for Western protectionism, or is it an unavoidable external misunderstanding amid China's industrial upgrading?

Faiola: I'm a bench scientist, not a political analyst. I stick to what I can see and measure in my own work. So, I'm not going to guess what the media or think tanks intend. I'll just tell you what the facts show me, and from my lab, the "China Shock 2.0" story just doesn't match up.
In my field of stem cell toxicology, the world is desperate for human relevant safety tests to replace animal testing. Tens of thousands of chemicals still don't have proper hazard data. When Chinese labs turn out high throughput organoid platforms at a fraction of the old cost, that's not dumping "overcapacity" into a full market. It's filling a huge shortage. A researcher in Brazil or Kenya suddenly gets access to a toxicity screen that never existed for them before. Demand is skyrocketing, not standing still. Meeting that demand is a service, not a shock.
With AI, it's the same pattern. DeepSeek's efficiency makes it cheaper and easier for biomedical researchers around the world to use these tools. It's helping create new markets, not stealing a fixed pie. Sure, any big shift causes some dislocation. The answer to that is domestic support and transition policies, not blocking technologies that help solve planetary problems.
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Published on:14:45:18