The service industry in China has demonstrated a positive trend of steady expansion, continuous quality improvement, and vigorous development of new growth drivers during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. A series of policy measures were implemented to promote high-quality and efficient development, foster new business forms and models, expand openness, and advance industrial integration.
The service sector has maintained its position as the largest component of the national economy for 11 consecutive years.
During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the value added of the service industry grew rapidly, increasing from 57.4851 trillion yuan in 2020 to 80.8879 trillion yuan in 2025, with an average annual real growth rate of 5.8% from 2021 to 2025. Its share of GDP rose from 55.5% in 2020 to 57.7% in 2025, solidifying its role as the dominant force in economic growth. In 2025, the service sector's contribution to national economic growth reached 61.4%, an increase of 6.3 percentage points from 2020.
The positive economic development and transformation of the service sector have created a large number of new jobs, offering broader development opportunities and more diverse career choices. By the end of 2025, employment in services reached 357.98 million people, accounting for 49.4% of the national workforce, a 1.7 percentage point increase from the end of 2020, maintaining the largest share among the three industrial sectors. New service formats such as live-streaming e-commerce, online entertainment, and the sharing economy have emerged, giving rise to numerous new professions like online streamers, delivery riders, and video content creators.
China has promoted deeper opening-up in key service areas including tourism, transport, healthcare, finance, and telecommunications, leading to simultaneous growth in the scale and quality of service trade. From 2021 to 2025, the total value of service imports and exports accumulated to 33.5 trillion yuan, a 37.6% increase compared to the 13th Five-Year Plan period, with an average annual growth rate of 12.1%. The figure for 2025 alone exceeded 8 trillion yuan, a record high.
With the continuous expansion of visa-free countries and the optimization of entry policies, "travel to China" and "shopping in China" have gained increasing popularity. In 2025, China's travel service exports reached 394 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 49.5%, marking the fastest growth among all service export sectors for two consecutive years. The overseas influence of cultural "new trio" products—online literature, online film and television series, and online games—has been expanding, driving rapid growth in knowledge-intensive service exports. In 2025, knowledge-intensive service exports grew by 10.5% year-on-year, accounting for 50.5% of total service exports.
Modern services are a key force driving industrial transformation and upgrading.
During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the structure of China's service industry has become more optimized, with modern services emerging as a crucial force for industrial transformation and upgrading. Industries such as information technology and business services have shown strong growth momentum. From 2021 to 2025, the value added of the information transmission, software and information technology services sector and the leasing and business services sector grew at average annual rates of 13.1% and 10.7%, respectively, outpacing the overall GDP growth rate by 7.7 and 5.3 percentage points.
Breakthroughs and widespread application of new-generation information technologies like big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence have accelerated the shaping of new growth drivers and advantages in the service sector. Strategic emerging services have continued to perform well. From 2021 to 2025, the operating revenue of strategic emerging service enterprises above a designated size grew at an average annual rate of 9.1%. The explosive development of AI has driven an exponential surge in computing power demand, spurring rapid growth in industries like software development and circuit design.
High-tech services have grown robustly. In 2025, the operating revenue of high-tech service enterprises above a designated size increased by 7.9% year-on-year. Investment in related fields has been continuously strengthened, with fixed asset investment in high-tech services growing at an average annual rate of 9.0% from 2021 to 2025, significantly faster than the average growth rate for the tertiary sector.
The widespread adoption of online transactions has driven the rapid expansion of the platform economy. New e-commerce business models characterized by content-driven, social, and instant features have demonstrated strong vitality. Platform transaction volumes have continued to expand. In 2025, the national platform transaction volume (e-commerce transaction value) reached 46.7 trillion yuan, a 29.1% increase from 2020.
Live-streaming e-commerce and instant retail have developed rapidly. By the end of 2025, the number of live-streaming users in China reached 810 million, a 31.9% increase from 2020, with a user penetration rate of 72.3% among internet users. New-format e-commerce is accelerating its transformation from the traditional "selling goods" model to a composite ecosystem encompassing "goods + fulfillment + platform services," becoming a new engine for economic growth in the service sector. In 2025, live-streaming e-commerce transaction value grew by over 10% year-on-year, while transaction value on instant delivery platforms for sectors like catering and fresh produce grew by 30.3% year-on-year.
Significant progress has been made in the digital transformation of the service sector.
During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, guided by the goals of enhancing convenience and improving service experience, the quality of public service supply has steadily strengthened, further increasing the sense of gain and satisfaction among the people.
Improvements have continued in education and healthcare. In education, the consolidation rate of nine-year compulsory education and the gross enrollment rate for senior secondary education reached 96.1% and 92.0% respectively in 2025, up 0.9 and 0.8 percentage points from 2020, bringing basic education to the average level of high-income countries globally. In healthcare, by the end of 2025, the number of health technicians, hospital beds, and healthcare institutions nationwide reached 13.46 million, 10.04 million, and 1.11 million respectively, representing increases of 26.0%, 10.3%, and 8.3% from 2020, indicating a growing healthcare capacity.
Intelligent technologies are increasingly integrated into all areas and processes of the service economy, with notable results in digital transformation. In 2024, 67.9% of industrial enterprises above a designated size in the tertiary sector applied digital technologies, with 62.4% using cloud computing and 39.4% using the Internet of Things. Basic informatization has become a standard configuration for most service enterprises.
With the deepening of the "AI+" initiative, economic forms and business models empowered by artificial intelligence are becoming increasingly diverse. In 2024, 20.2% of industrial enterprises above a designated size in the tertiary sector applied AI. Professional service fields such as finance, logistics, education, and law are utilizing AI technologies like deep learning, intelligent scheduling, and natural language processing to provide consumers with precise, efficient decision support and personalized solutions.
Driven by both policy guidance and technological innovation, high-value-added services like R&D design and information services are accelerating their integration into the manufacturing process. Manufacturing enterprises are increasingly transforming into comprehensive providers of "product + service + solution," with significant enhancement in servitization and intelligent models. The construction of smart factories is accelerating, extending the industrial chain towards the high end. By the end of 2025, China had cumulatively built over 35,000 basic-level, over 8,200 advanced-level, and over 500 exemplary-level smart factories, and cultivated 15 leading smart factories.
Looking back on the 14th Five-Year Plan period, reforms across all service sectors in China have been comprehensively deepened, achieving positive results in high-quality development. Looking ahead to the 15th Five-Year Plan period, efforts will focus on implementing actions to expand capacity and improve quality in the service sector, promoting the extension of producer services towards specialization and the high end of the value chain, facilitating high-quality, diverse, and convenient development of consumer services, fostering more "China Service" brands, striving to create a new phase of high-quality development in services, and playing a more critical role in advancing Chinese modernization.
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