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

Chinese firms inked service outsourcing contracts worth about 850.39 billion yuan (about $124.87 billion) in the January-August period, up 8.2 percent year-on-year.

The executed contract value stood at 586.71 billion yuan in the first eight months, representing a year-on-year increase of 12.5 percent.

Of the total, the value of offshore service outsourcing contracts reached 506.67 billion yuan during the period, up 6.8 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 subsectors: information technology outsourcing, business process outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing.