Currently, service trade is increasingly becoming a key support for opening up new growth points in trade and stabilizing the basic trade base. It plays an increasingly important role in helping the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry, promoting innovation in trade formats, and deepening market-oriented reforms. The vigorous development of modern service trade is attributed to the enhanced tradability of service products brought about by digital technology. In the new situation, service trade has also deeply integrated into the development wave of the digital economy, presenting some new characteristics that are different from traditional industries and service formats. One is the expansion of the space and scope of service trade. Traditional service products often lack the possibility of remote trade due to the inseparability of production and consumption processes. However, the development of digital technology has largely broken through the limitation of non tradable service products. Many service industries, including finance, consulting, education, healthcare, etc., can use digital technology to achieve low-cost, even zero cost remote transmission and become an important component of the international trade system. Against the backdrop of significantly enhanced tradability, service trade is also deeply integrated with the manufacturing industry, extending the industrial chain to provide after-sales and additional services for finished products, and even opening up a new business model of "renting instead of selling". The trend of "servitization" in the manufacturing industry has further expanded the space for service trade. The second is that service products will achieve a transition from "labor-intensive" to "capital intensive". Due to the strong individualized characteristics of service products, it is difficult to standardize production using the traditional "assembly line" mode, and the traditional service industry presents a typical "labor-intensive" color. With breakthroughs in technologies such as machine learning and big language modeling, artificial intelligence is gradually replacing traditional human capital in fields such as software, design, copywriting, customer service, and artistic creation. Future service products will also have more "capital intensive" characteristics as a result. Thirdly, cultural distance will replace geographical distance as an important factor affecting the scale of trade. Under the traditional "gravity model", transportation costs determined by geographical distance are one of the core factors affecting trade scale. However, under the conditions of the digital economy, the almost zero transportation costs have significantly reduced the impact of geographical distance on service trade. Meanwhile, due to the cultural characteristics inherent in service products, some "implicit" distances between countries, such as cultural and institutional distances, will further highlight their impact on digital trade. Fourthly, service trade will exhibit characteristics of platformization, product diversification, and personalization. As a typical bilateral market that directly gathers users and suppliers, platform economy is the most efficient trading method for modern service trade relying on a large amount of information and data. Thanks to the "long tail effect" brought by the platform economy, some niche demands that are difficult to meet in traditional markets can also form a sufficient market size, and give rise to personalized and customized service products targeting these demands, greatly improving the diversity of products. According to the overall requirements of building a strong trading nation, the strategic goals for the future development of service trade include further expansion of trade scale, optimization of trade structure, further improvement of regulatory system, establishment of basic security system, and effective highlighting of the driving effect on economic development and people's livelihood welfare. In the era of digital economy, high-quality development of service trade can be promoted through the following paths. Deepen innovation in service trade led by digital technology. Digital technology is the core technological foundation of modern service trade, and the future development of service trade should also keep up with the trend of digital technology. By strengthening the construction of hard and soft environments that are compatible with digital technology, service enterprises should be encouraged to solidly promote technological innovation and application. In terms of hard environment, we will focus on developing new digital infrastructure such as next-generation communication networks, data storage and remote computing terminals, and public information platforms, and accelerate the intelligent transformation of traditional infrastructure; In terms of soft environment, further improve the intellectual property protection system related to digital technology innovation, the data element management system that balances security and development, establish an industrial support policy system that conforms to the laws of technological innovation and the requirements of industrial innovation and development, and break down information barriers between departments, leading the simplification of administrative approval and regulatory processes. Deepen the opening up of the service industry to the outside world through institutional innovation. Expanding the opening up of the service industry to the outside world and attracting high-level foreign investment in service enterprises is an important part of improving the quality of service trade entities. In recent years, China's service sector has made significant progress in market access, but there are still some deep institutional barriers. We should take institutional innovation as the guide and focus on breaking down relevant institutional barriers, including further relaxing market access restrictions in areas such as law, healthcare, education, culture, etc. that have many restrictions based on industrial development. Standardize the qualification recognition standards for the service industry at the national or regional level, and achieve mutual recognition of qualification certificates. Sort out and reduce various implicit institutional barriers that affect market access in the service industry. Resolve the barriers for foreign nationals to reside, work, and consume in China, and establish a location advantage that attracts foreign-funded enterprises with a favorable business environment. Promote collaborative development in different fields through industrial integration. The development of service trade is closely related to the coordinated development of various industries within the manufacturing and even service industries. Taking the "service-oriented manufacturing" as an opportunity, actively expanding the industrial chain of the manufacturing industry, incorporating upstream market research, research and development design, and downstream repair, maintenance, and derivative service needs into the industrial system, and utilizing advanced technologies such as automation and intelligent manufacturing, remote control, and 3D printing to develop new manufacturing outsourcing services, creating new growth points for service trade. Promote the full linkage of various industries within the service industry, such as tourism, transportation and healthcare, education, entertainment, etc., through the "scope economy", and achieve cluster development of service trade. Develop international markets based on core competitiveness. With the development of China's service industry and the enhancement of the competitiveness of service enterprises, "going global" will become an inevitable choice for more and more domestic service enterprises. In this process, enterprises should be encouraged to combine the actual situation and advantages of their local region and industry, innovate comprehensively based on underlying technologies, application scenarios, formats, and fully explore traditional ethnic culture, and cultivate the core competitiveness of Chinese service enterprises in the international market. Select appropriate promotion channels and methods according to the thinking of the Internet era and the characteristics of short, smooth, fragmented and decentralized information dissemination. Domestic enterprises should also actively connect with various international service trade rules, cooperate with leading foreign industry enterprises in technology development, market expansion, and actively promote the export of Chinese standards in mature fields. Guided by the overall national security concept, balancing openness and security. The service industry is a key area related to the national economy and people's livelihood, and special attention should be paid to the construction of a security system in the process of opening up to the outside world. From the perspective of overall national security, we should examine the openness and security of the service sector. While relaxing market access for the service industry, we should establish necessary operational rules and compliance regulatory systems, clarify the responsibilities of regulatory departments, and achieve a shift from "pre-approval" to "post supervision". Improve relevant security management systems, including export control systems and intellectual property protection systems to prevent the leakage of core technologies, data element supervision systems to ensure national security and personal privacy, and hierarchical classification supervision systems related to cultural products. Adhere to the "bottom line thinking" in the field of opening up the service industry, scientifically evaluate the opening risks of various service industries, clarify the opening levels and limits of sensitive industries, and avoid the problem of "opening up for the sake of opening up". (Xinhua News Agency) Author: Zhang Yu (Director of the International Economic and Trade Research Office of the Institute of Finance and Economics Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)