On the morning of April 27, the 19th Luminaries Lecture in Humanities and Social Sciences was held at the Lecture Hall of Tian Jiabing Building. Zhao Zhongxiu, President of University of International Business and Economics, delivered a lecture titled “Accelerating the Innovative Development of Service Trade and Actively Cultivating New Drivers for Foreign Trade Growth”. Li Hu, Chairman of the HNU Council, and other university leaders attended the forum.

On the morning of April 27, the 19th Luminaries Lecture in Humanities & Social Sciences is held at the Lecture Hall of Tianjiabing Building. (Photo by Cheng Xue)

Zhao Zhongxiu systematically elaborated on the new trends in the global service trade and the current situation and challenges facing China’s service trade. He noted that service trade had become a new engine for global trade growth. China’s service trade scale has risen to second place in the world, with knowledge-intensive service trade continuing to grow and travel service exports increasing rapidly. However, compared with the international standard, it still faces prominent issues such as a relatively low share in total trade, a long-standing deficit, and structural imbalance, exhibiting the stage-specific characteristics of an “upper-middle-income emerging economy”.

In response to tariff tensions and the restructuring of global value chains, Zhao proposed a set of strategies: strengthening advantages while addressing weaknesses and structural imbalances; advancing manufacturing servitization by shifting from product sales to full life-cycle solutions and building Chinese service brands; enhancing the competitiveness of financial and digital services trade and expanding digitally delivered services; accelerating green, low-carbon services trade; using services trade to boost consumption and expand high-quality service imports and exports; and promoting institutional opening-up by removing barriers in rules, regulations, management, and standards.

Zhao Zhongxiu delivers the lecture. (Photo by Cheng Xue)

Q&A session (Photo by Yu Boyuan)

The lecture was warmly received and fully attended. Teachers and students actively raised questions on topics such as the development of specialized service trade in the Hainan Free Trade Port, China’s progress in advancing its accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and the opportunities and challenges in expanding digital services trade. Zhao Zhongxiu answered with patience and insight.

Representatives from relevant departments of Hainan University, as well as faculty and student representatives from Haidian Campus, Danzhou Campus, Mission Hills Campus (including Chengxi Teaching Site) and Yazhou Campus attended the lecture both on-site and online.

Translated by Ning Keer

Proofread by Pan Junfeng