Daily Times

At an exhibition booth of the ongoing 2023 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) held in Beijing, visitors are queuing up for free notebooks printed with Arabic architecture pictures.

The notebooks are special gifts for visitors prepared by Etihad Airways from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Italian staffer with the airline company’s Beijing office, who is in charge of the booth, uses simple Chinese to promote their business. The large number of visitors at the fair reflects accelerating recovery of China’s service trade.

Emirates, an airline company from the UAE that also participates in this year’s CIFTIS, has intensified the frequency of its air services to China starting from Sept. 1, based on the resumption of its Dubai to Beijing route this March. The company now has two flights bound for Beijing every day, as the passenger traffic service recovers to the pre-COVID level.

Themed “Opening-up leads development, cooperation delivers the future,” the 2023 CIFTIS is being held in Beijing from Sept. 2 to 6 and features over 200 events, including forums, negotiations, and summits. Eighty-three countries and international organizations are attending the fair, and more than 2,400 companies are participating in offline exhibitions.

“Service trade has become an important driving force of globalization. As digital technologies have dramatically increased the tradability of services, huge development potentials of the service sector have been unleashed,” said Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen during a subforum on the development of trade in services.

China is an advocate of international cooperation and sustainable development, said Siddharth Chatterjee, UN Resident Coordinator in China, at the same subforum, calling for raising the spirit of cooperation and collaboration.

China’s service sector has shown strong resilience. In 2022, the country’s total service imports and exports amounted to nearly 6 trillion yuan (about 836 billion U.S. dollars), up 12.9 percent year on year, a record new high.