The 2nd China Trade in Services Congress was opened in China National Convention Center in the morning of November 24th, Beijing. Cheng Deming, Minister of Commerce delivered a keynote speech, stating that the development of service trade is a new driving force for coping with the global financial crisis and boosting global economic recovery.

According to Cheng, in the collective efforts of tackling with the crisis, all countries have adopted a series of measures to stimulate economy and made policies and measures to promote emerging industries. At present, the world economy is stabilizing and recovering, but the unemployment rate remains high, the savings rate rises slowly, and there's a long to go before the international trade recovers and grows. So, one of the main new driving forces for the global economic recovery is to vigorously develop the service trade which is open, clean and environment-friendly, knowledge-intensive and labor-intensive.

Cheng emphasized that it was imperative to build an open global service trade system. As a firm supporter of trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, China is dedicated to building a multilateral trade system which is fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory. Among the 160 service trade sectors and subsectors of WTO, China has pledged to open 100 sectors and sub-sectors and the openness is nearly equivalent to that of developed countries. Service Trade is a very important issue following the agriculture and non-agriculture in the Doha Round Negotiation. China is willing to continually promote the Doha Round Negotiation together with all other parties so as to achieve comprehensive and balanced results and realize goals for the development round.

Cheng said that China would strive to improve the openness of its service industry, expand services import and promote the strategy of "Bringing in" and "Going global" in the service industry. China will bring in strategic investors in fields such as transportation, finance, insurance, design, research and development, marketing and medical service so as to accelerate the restructuring of China's service industry. And it will encourage foreign investors to participate in software development, international outsourcing and logistics services so as to raise China's service industry to a higher level in the global production network and value chain. Additionally, China will support enterprise in the fields of project contracting, architecture, transportation, and distribution, etc. to conduct direct investments and local operation in developing countries and regions of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Meanwhile, through full use of brand effects formed by China's Time-honored Brands, China will actively seek overseas development and help expand international market for enterprises with Chinese characteristics in the service industry such as traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese food.

Distinguished guests including Choi Kyung-Hwan, Minister of Knowledge Economy of Korea, Alejandro Jara, Deputy Director-General of WTO, and Vinod Thomas, Senior Vice President at World Bank also attended the opening ceremony of the congress and gave speeches. More than 1,500 representatives attended the ceremony and they were from related departments of the State Council, Commercial Administrations all over China, domestic service trade enterprises of all fields and other countries and regions like UK, German, U.S.A, Canada, Korea, Singapore, Australia, and Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan etc.