(Photo/Xinhua)

China’s foreign trade has kept momentum bringing stable growth in terms of both goods as well as services.

In 2018, the total value of the country’s trade of goods exceeded 30 trillion yuan (about $4.3 trillion) for the first time, accounting for 11.8 percent of the global total.

In fact, China’s trade of goods still has room for expansion as a result of potential growth in both imports as well as exports, said Tu Xinquan, director of the China Institute for WTO Studies at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.

Beside, the structure of the country’s trade of goods was optimized. According to data from its Ministry of Commerce, exports of mechanical and electrical products between January and October of this year accounted for 58.3 percent of total exports. In particular, exports of high-quality, high-tech, high-value-added products including integrated circuits, photo-voltaic products, excavation machinery, and medical devices all maintained rapid growth.

China will continue to optimize its trade mix, Tu said, adding that large mechanical equipment, core components of electro-mechanical products, and electronic products will all be the main focus of the country’s foreign trade.

In addition, service trade is increasingly becoming a new engine for the development of the country’s foreign trade and further opening-up.

China’s service trade surpassed 4 trillion yuan in the first three quarters of this year. Its volume will scale up, and the share of service trade and its importance to the country’s foreign trade will continue to rise, said Luo Libin from Beijing International Studies University.

In the first nine months of this year, the value of service outsourcing contracts signed by Chinese companies hit 886.4 billion yuan, marking an increase of 4.4 percent.