Opening-up and Liberalization of Services:Basic Trend, International Comparison and China’s Strategy

This paper firstly examines the global trend and institutional evolution in economic tertiarization and services liberalization, and then employs the popular STRI indices to evaluate the levels of opening-up and liberalization of China’s service sectors through a global comparison. The growth, liberalization, and opening-up of service sectors are the general trend of world economic development, while comparing with other economies especially developed economies, China’s service sectors exhibits a lower level of development and opening-up. China is one of the few economies that have the highest restriction barriers in services markets. All service sectors except for architecture are subject to restriction barriers above the sample average, and six sectors including broadcasting, courier, motion, recording, telecommunication, and digital services are most heavily restricted. Considering the long-run development of Chinese economy, the evolution of global economic and trade institution especially the services trade institution, and the chronical trend of Sino-US trade frictions, China should actively expand and deepen the market-oriented reform and opening-up in services, so as to improve the international competitivness of service sectors.