BEIJING — China’s service trade hit a historic high in the first ten months of this year with optimized structure and stable progress, said the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) on Dec 4.

The country’s service trade grew 11.1 percent year-on-year to stand over 4.3 trillion yuan (nearly $624 billion) from January to October, MOC data showed.

Service exports increased 14.3 percent to 1.42 trillion yuan, while imports gained 9.6 percent to 2.88 trillion yuan, resulting in a deficit of over 1.4 trillion yuan.

The rapid growth of emerging services has pushed the high-quality development of the service trade, the MOC said.

Trade of emerging services rose 20.4 percent year-on-year in the Jan-Oct period, 9.3 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate.

However, the traditional service sector, including tourism, transportation and construction industries, takes up 64 percent of the whole trade volume, still remaining a large part of the industry.

In terms of service imports, China’s demand for high-value-added service continues to grow as supply-side structural reform advances and the manufacturing industry upgrades.

China has paid 194.86 billion yuan for imported intellectual property in the first ten months this year, up 22.5 percent.

Trade in services refers to the sale and delivery of intangible products such as transportation, tourism, telecommunications, construction, advertising, computing, and accounting.

China has taken steps to improve the development of trade in services, including gradually opening up the finance, education, culture, and medical treatment sectors.

In October this year, the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone issued the country’s first negative list in the service trade field.