On the morning of May 28, the Keynote Forum of 2017 Beijing International Fair for Trade in Services was held in the National Convention Center. Vice Minister of Commerce Fang Aiqing attended the conference and delivered a keynote speech. Attending were Executive Vice Mayor of Beijing Zhang Gong, Vice Mayor of Beijing Cheng Hong, President of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank Jin Liqun, Deputy Secretary General of OECD Mari Kiviniemi and representatives from international organizations such as the UNCTAD, the WTO and the International Trade Center.

Fang pointed out that at the beginning of this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping put forward the Chinese plan of "constructing human destiny community and realizing the win-win result and common sharing". At the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, he proposed the silk road spirit of "peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit and win-win result," pointing out the new direction for economic globalization. During the process of economic globalization, the status and function of service industry and service trade become increasingly outstanding. The service link represented by research and development, marketing and brand has played a much more significantly leading role in the global value chain, and it has even decided the layout of the global value chain and the flow direction of capital. With the development of information technology, the trend of servitization of manufacturing industry and service outsourcing becomes stronger. Opening up and cooperation become the common topic faced by service industry of all countries and the development of service trade.

Fang said that Chinese government positively promotes opening up, reform and innovation of service industry and service trade, paying high attention to it and has made remarkable achievement, making great contribution to the global trade and world economic growth. In 2016, Chinese market absorbed almost one ten of the global service export. Since the proposal of the Belt and Road initiative, China has invested more than US$30 billion to service industry of countries along the line. In the next five years, China is estimated to import more than US$2.2-trillion service from the whole world.

Fang emphasized that efforts should be made to proceed from the general vision of human destiny community and the profound mission of fair, reasonable and transparent international trade and economic investment rule system to jointly promote the open development of service industry and service trade. First is to further expand opening up, continue to promote the liberalization and facilitation of service trade, focus on promoting free trade pilot area, service trade innovative development pilot; take the initiative to carry out and try the open and comprehensive pilot of service industry of Beijing, and positively cultivate a tolerant and orderly service trade and investment environment. Second is to further promote innovation, strive to eliminate deep mechanism barriers limiting service industry development by innovating development concept, development environment and development mode. Third is to further deepen cooperation, not only deepen mutual cooperation at the regional level and join hands to promote the construction of the Belt and Road initiative, but also strengthen practical cooperation in key fields, expand important service export of technology, culture, finance and service outsourcing, and enhance mutual trust cooperation at rule level, jointly oppose trade protectionism, and maintain the major channel role of multilateral system in the service trade development.

Before the forum, Vice Minister Fang, together with Executive Vice Mayor Zhang Gong, Vice Mayor Cheng Hong, toured the exhibition area of 2017 Beijing International Fair for Trade in Services.