The State Council recently issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the Development of the Service Outsourcing Industry." Clearly state by 2020 In recent years, the service outsourcing industry has achieved coordinated development in both international and domestic markets, with its scale significantly expanding and its structure markedly optimized. As a result, the competitiveness of Chinese enterprises on the global stage has greatly improved, making the service outsourcing industry an important pathway for China to participate in the global industrial division of labor and enhance its position in the industrial value chain. The document also outlines the key areas, major tasks, and supporting measures for the development of the service outsourcing industry.

This follows last November. 26th of the month Following the State Council’s executive meeting, which specifically discussed accelerating the development of the service outsourcing industry, the State Council has, for the first time, issued a comprehensive plan to promote the faster growth of the service outsourcing sector. Qi Haitao, CEO of China Service Outsourcing Network, told a reporter from the Economic Daily that the “Opinions” clearly underscore the important position of the service outsourcing industry, and the industry is poised to enter a period of robust growth.

Join the WTO Since then, China’s foreign trade, which has long been dominated by merchandise trade, has experienced rapid growth. However, as labor costs continue to rise and resource and environmental pressures intensify, the traditional advantages of merchandise trade—primarily based on processing trade—are gradually eroding. The development of service trade represents a green transformation path that can help shift our economy away from the previous extensive growth model, which relied heavily on resource exploitation, environmental degradation, and massive energy consumption, toward a new model characterized by enhanced human quality, technological competitiveness, and overall competitive strength, thereby boosting the capacity and level of economic development.

“Our country is rapidly moving toward a service-based economy, and the outsourcing industry boasts tremendous prospects. It will effectively absorb employment, foster mass entrepreneurship, and become a new driving force for China’s sustainable economic growth,” said Bai Ming, a researcher at the Institute of Research under the Ministry of Commerce.

The service outsourcing industry is an important component of China’s economic restructuring, particularly in the adjustment of its foreign economic structure, and also serves as a key support for upgrading China’s industrial sectors. In recent years, China’s service outsourcing industry has experienced rapid growth. 2013 In China, the service outsourcing industry (offshore + The onshore market has reached a total size of nearly 1.7 trillion RMB, accounting for 2.97% of the country’s GDP and contributing approximately 0.8 percentage points to national economic growth.

The outsourcing industry plays a significant role in absorbing employment. Data shows that in 2014... Year 1 By November, China had added 629,000 new employees in the service outsourcing sector, of whom 435,000 held a college degree (including associate degrees), accounting for 69.1% of the total workforce. As of the end of October 2014, China had a total of 27,686 service outsourcing enterprises, employing 5.991 million people, among whom 3.994 million held a college degree (including associate degrees), representing 66.7% of the total workforce. Bai Ming believes that the service outsourcing industry is labor- and knowledge-intensive, capable of absorbing a large number of mid- to high-level workers and boosting employment, especially among college graduates.

However, compared to merchandise trade, China’s service trade has developed relatively laggingly, and the service outsourcing industry still occupies a relatively low end of the international industrial value chain. The “Opinions” clearly state that the service outsourcing industry should expand into high-tech and high-value-added sectors, vigorously developing service outsourcing in fields such as software and information technology, design, R&D, the internet, healthcare, manufacturing, and energy. At the same time, it is also necessary to accelerate the development of service outsourcing in areas including cultural creativity, education, transportation and logistics, health care, scientific and technological services, wholesale and retail, and leisure and entertainment. The “Opinions” further emphasize that the financial sector not only needs to provide financing convenience for the development of the service outsourcing industry, but also should actively develop service outsourcing itself. In addition, a “Guidance Catalogue of Key Development Areas for the Service Outsourcing Industry” will be released regularly in the future.

Bai Ming stated, “The service outsourcing industry no longer needs to follow the old path of ‘growing big before becoming strong, and developing before upgrading.’ Instead, it should simultaneously focus on both scaling up and strengthening its capabilities, and move directly toward the high end of the industrial value chain.” Currently, a new wave of information technology innovation—represented by cloud computing and the Internet of Things—is giving rise to new service models and providing fresh growth opportunities for the rapid development of high-value-added service trade and high-value-added service outsourcing.

The "Opinions" propose leveraging the established industrial agglomeration advantages of regions such as the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, the Bohai Rim, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, while also capitalizing on the geographical advantages of central and western China and the comprehensive industrial system of Northeast China, to foster a healthy development pattern for the service outsourcing industry characterized by distinct features, complementary strengths, and coordinated order.

The “Opinions” also propose implementing a strategy of diversifying international markets and promoting the export of service standards, while emphasizing the need to closely align with the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st... The connections among countries and regions along the Maritime Silk Road of the 21st Century are helping to create a new, diversified market landscape. Bai Ming believes that service outsourcing must be pursued from a global perspective, fully leveraging both domestic and international markets and resources to achieve breakthrough progress. Developing service outsourcing makes the content of the Belt and Road Initiative more concrete; China and countries along the route have strong complementary strengths in the field of service outsourcing, leaving ample room for cooperation.

China’s service outsourcing industry is still in its early stages. Compared with the advanced countries in global service outsourcing, there remains a significant gap in both the scale and quality of industrial development. The industry’s ability to integrate global business resources is notably insufficient, and the “Made in China” brand has yet to gain widespread recognition within the global industry. As a result, the industry’s influence and voice on the international stage remain relatively weak. Bai Ming believes that strengthening fiscal, financial, and tax support—providing the service outsourcing industry with tangible financial resources—will greatly boost its development.

“One of the key highlights of the ‘Opinions’ is that they not only emphasize the role of service outsourcing in job creation but also underscore its importance for entrepreneurship and innovation, thereby endowing service outsourcing with new functions,” Qi Haitao told a reporter from the Economic Daily. “The ‘Opinions’ place particular emphasis on innovation-driven development. In addition to fiscal, tax, and financial support, they also call for boosting the R&D and innovation capabilities of service outsourcing enterprises, guiding and supporting R&D through national science and technology programs (including special projects and funds), and encouraging innovation in business and management models. This encourages enterprises to place greater emphasis on innovation and to strengthen their internal capabilities.” (Reporter: Li Yuyang)