BEIJING — China's service outsourcing industry reported stable growth in the first half of 2020, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

Chinese firms inked service outsourcing contracts worth about 679.53 billion yuan (about $97.2 billion) in the first half, up 5.9 percent year-on-year.

The executed contract value stood at 450.13 billion yuan from January to June, a year-on-year increase of 10.9 percent.

Of the total, the value of offshore service outsourcing contracts reached 403.83 billion yuan during the period, up 1.8 percent year-on-year.

Outsourcing is the business practice of hiring a party outside a company to perform services and make goods traditionally undertaken by the company's employees.

In China, service outsourcing is typically divided into three sub-sectors: information technology outsourcing, business process outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing.