A Comparative Study on China and America's Trade in Services

In recent years, China's service trade has experienced rapid progress. While compared with the US, China's foreign trade in service still lags far behind. China's gap with the US is shown in the following: For the scale of trade in services, China's trade volume equals only one third of that of the US. In addition, trade deficit has kept increasing in recent years. On the contrary, the US's balance of trade in services has kept increasing; China's trade in services is characterized by traditional structure, in which the capital-intensive and knowledge-intensive items take up only a small part while the US's mainly consists of the newly emerging items. With these factors, both TC index and RCA index clearly show that China's international competitiveness has long remained low in the international market. Therefore, it is necessary forChina to learn from the US in the development of trade in services.