BEIJING — The volume of China's cross-border services trade has surpassed the pre-pandemic level seen in 2019, the country's forex regulator said on July 22.

The global pandemic has weighed on China's cross-border travel, but the recovery of other parts of the foreign services trade was relatively fast, Wang Chunying, deputy director and spokesperson of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said at a press conference.

The country's cross-border services trade balance recovered to the 2019 level last year, and the figure climbed 26 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2022, Wang said.

Both the income and the expenditure of China's services trade have seen growing momentum this year, and the services trade deficit has further narrowed, she said.

Wang noted that higher incomes in some foreign services trade sectors, such as transport, commercial services and computer information services, reflect the improvement of international competitiveness in related fields.