The global trade recovery is under pressure, and service trade has become the core pillar to stabilize the global trade market. During the China International Fair for Trade in Services, the "China Service Trade Development Report 2025" and the "Digital Trade Development and Cooperation Report 2026" were released, revealing the pillar position and strong growth resilience of digital trade——

From a global perspective, the total value of global service exports in 2025 will reach 9.68 trillion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 8.3%. The scale of digital service trade has exceeded 5.26 trillion US dollars, maintaining a high growth rate of over 9% for three consecutive years, a significant increase of 86.2% compared to 2019, far exceeding the growth rate of 38.1% in goods trade and 51.1% in traditional service trade during the same period, making it the most dynamic growth track in global trade.

From the perspective of domestic development, the volume of digital service trade in China continues to expand. By 2025, the total import and export volume of digital services in China will reach 410.84 billion US dollars, and the export scale will reach 245.05 billion US dollars. While the scale has been growing year by year, the average annual growth rate has remained stable at 7.2%, and the growth trend is steady and sustainable.

How has the sustained high-speed growth of China's digital trade been achieved?

Wang Zhiqin, Vice President of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, introduced at the meeting that ICT services have become the largest core category in China's digital service export trade, with a total growth rate of 48.6% from 2021 to 2025 and an average annual compound growth rate of over 10%. It has contributed about 60% of China's digital service export growth during the 14th Five Year Plan period and has become the core driving force for the growth of digital service trade in China and even globally.

Digital intelligence technology has completely broken the time and space limitations of traditional service trade, promoting the acceleration of global service trade towards digitization, intelligence, and convenience iteration and upgrading. Wang Yiming, former deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council, said that knowledge intensive production services such as research and development design, intellectual property, and data services have gradually become the core links of global value chain value-added, completely rewriting the rules of international trade competition, and promoting trade competition from traditional product price competition to full chain service competition and high value-added competition.

Data shows that from 2021 to 2025, China's net exports of digital services will increase from 26.9 billion US dollars to 79.2 billion US dollars, with the scale expanding nearly threefold in five years, becoming a key support for optimizing foreign trade structure and improving trade quality.

The rapid growth of digital trade cannot be separated from the hard core support of AI computing infrastructure.

Liu Ruoyu, Global Partner and Senior Vice President of Xingyun Group, has a deep feeling about this: "In the entire service trade chain, the role of artificial intelligence technology has gone from being just icing on the cake in the past to being indispensable like water, electricity, and networks today." He found that in the past, enterprises could only achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement in a single link when using AI, but now AI has been deeply integrated into the entire chain of internal governance, cross-border performance, and overseas operations.

He shared a set of data: from the fourth quarter of last year to July this year, the overall AI customs clearance coverage rate of Xingyun Group's cross-border platform has increased from less than 10% to 40%, and the error rate has decreased from 10% to less than 1%.

This AI empowerment effect is not an isolated case. The upgrade of computing power and data performance capabilities has fully penetrated into core foreign trade links such as inspection and quarantine, tax settlement, and cross-border risk control, significantly reducing institutional costs of cross-border trade and improving customs clearance facilitation. Liu Ruoyu believes that AI computing power services have become a new force for China's technology to go global and one of the fastest growing tracks in domestic service trade. In the future, it will become the most imaginative export category for China's service trade.

Industry experts also generally believe in the long-term potential of AI empowering service trade. He Dayong, Managing Director of Boston Consulting Group and Co Head of BCG Global Think Tank in China, believes that the internationalization of Chinese enterprises has gradually entered a new stage of ability to go global, starting from the early stage of product and investment going global. AI is further enhancing the responsiveness and adaptability of Chinese enterprises to the global market. As more enterprises continue to replicate and export these capabilities, the internationalization level and global competitiveness of Chinese enterprises will be further improved. ”He said.

At present, China's service trade is developing rapidly, and in the next five years, AI will comprehensively accelerate the process of industrial empowerment. The intelligent development of service trade will enter a new cycle. ”Zhao Jinping, Vice President of the China Association for Trade in Services, predicts that in the next few years, the vast majority of enterprises will increase the expansion of AI application scenarios, more widely apply artificial intelligence technology to the entire industry chain, and help enterprises integrate the industry chain and better enter the international market.