(Yicai Global) Oct.04 -- China's service trade went up 9.4 percent year on year to top CNY3.27 trillion (about USD504.21 billion) in the first eight months of the year, the Ministry of Commerce said yesterday.

Of the total, service exports reached approximately CNY1.55 trillion, up 25.3 percent year on year, and service imports stood at CNY1.72 trillion, down 1.8 percent year on year.

The country logged a marked drop in service trade deficit during the period as the growth of service trade exports outpaced that of imports by 27.1 percentage points.

In the first eight months, the deficit of service trade stood at CNY171.67 billion, CNY515.62 billion less than the same period last year, MOC data showed.

Compared with the same period in 2019, however, service trade dropped 8.4 percent, with service exports up 22.6 percent and service imports down 25.4 percent.

In August alone, the country's service trade reached CNY462.47 billion, up 24.8 percent year on year.

Trade in knowledge-intensive services rose in the January-August period to reach nearly CNY1.48 trillion, up 12 percent year on year. The figure accounted for 45.1 percent of the total service trade.

Knowledge-intensive service exports increased 16 percent from a year ago to CNY803.82 billion, accounting for more than half of total service exports, while knowledge-intensive service imports rose 7.5 percent to CNY671.6 billion.

Trade in travel services continued to decline, said the MOC.

In the January-August period, trade in travel services dropped 30.1 percent year on year to CNY506.48 billion as countries around the world continued to take strict measures to restrict people's cross-border movement.

China has taken a slew of measures to widen the opening-up of the service industry and pledged to make more efforts to promote the opening-up of trade in services to a higher level.

Editor: Liao Shumin