The Research On Competitiveness Of Chinese Trade In Services

Services, especially modern services play a more and more important role in a country's economic growth and evolution of industries structure. With the blooming of global services industry, the services trade becomes an important international economic activity besides goods trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). The focus of international competition is transferring from goods trade to trade in services. So, it's necessary to evaluate the competitiveness of Chinese trade in services in all directions, analyze which industries have the comparative advantage and the reasons, and try to find a way to improve the competitiveness of Chinese services trade in order to promote the development of international trade and economic growth of China.First, we summarize the existing research results and find that the competitiveness of services trade comes from the comparative advantage and the competitive advantage, the domestic research are focus on the total competitiveness of trade in services or on a certain industry. The existing research results are not very comprehensive and detailed, so based on the data of 1986-2005, this thesis measures the Chinese competitiveness of services trade by using three typical indexes and compares the indexes with other countries. Four points can be drawn from that study. First, services trade of China develops very quickly in total volume, but the level is still low compared with developed countries; second, there is always the unfavorable trade balance in services trade; third, the industry structure of trade in services is not reasonable; fourth, the import and export markets are too concentrated. The reasons which caused the backwardness of Chinese trade in services include: the domestic services industry fall behind; the shortage of advanced production factors; the declining needs of domestic services market; the division of domestic services market; the inefficient of the management of services industries and so on.Tourism industry has comparative advantage; the competitiveness of transportation industry is very weak, and the new service industries such as finance services, IT services and so on have no comparative advantage.Then, a further analysis is paid to the strategic suggestions to improve the competitiveness of Chinese trade in services.