Zhang Yingxi: Focus on Quality and Efficiency to Build a New System for the Service Industry
The development level of the service sector is a significant marker for measuring the degree of development in a modern economy and society. Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, General Secretary Xi Jinping has made a series of important expositions on the high-quality development of the service sector, emphasizing the need to "build a new, high-quality and efficient service system and promote the deep integration of modern services with advanced manufacturing and modern agriculture." Focusing efforts on being "high-quality and efficient" to form a new service system adapted to the new developmental situation is both an urgent necessity for extending industrial chains and increasing value-added, and an inevitable requirement for meeting the people's ever-upgrading demand for high quality and diversity. Proceeding from actual conditions, we must consider the construction of a high-quality and efficient new service system in coordination with high-quality development. By improving quality, optimizing structures, and refining standards, we should drive producer services toward specialization and promote the upgrade of consumer services toward high quality, continuously enhancing the competitiveness and resilience of the service sector to provide solid support for building a modern economic system.
The Essence of the New Service System Lies in "Newness"
As a vital component of the national economy, the service sector’s vast scale and broad coverage dictate that its high-quality development is by no means an improvement of a single link or a localized field, but must be a systematic and integrated project. The essence of building a new service system lies in "newness," but this "newness" is not a simple cumulative increase in numbers or a stacking of business formats. Rather, it is the dual-wheel drive of technological innovation and institutional reform that shifts the service sector from scale expansion to quality leadership, ultimately achieving the developmental goals of being "high-quality" and "efficient." The construction of a new service system centrally embodies profound innovations in developmental concepts, structural functions, and operational mechanisms.
Adhere to innovation-driven growth to stimulate new momentum for the efficient operation of the service sector. Innovation is the key to enhancing the competitiveness of the service sector. Facing the new situation of rapid technological development, the development of the service sector must shift toward innovation-driven intensification and efficiency. From the dimension of technological innovation, the deep integration of cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence and big data with the service sector is reshaping the mode of service supply. For example, in producer services, industrial internet platforms utilize real-time data interaction to improve supply chain coordination efficiency, transforming services such as logistics, finance, and R&D from "passive response" to "active anticipation." In consumer services, new formats such as smart retail, online healthcare, and immersive cultural tourism have broken the spatial and temporal limitations of traditional services, meeting people's new expectations for a high-quality life through personalized and scenario-based supply. Institutional reform, meanwhile, provides the guarantee for this "newness." By simplifying approval processes, improving industry standards, and optimizing factor allocation, a more relaxed development environment is created for innovative service enterprises, allowing technological innovation achievements to be converted into actual service performance more efficiently. Technological empowerment and institutional innovation complement each other, together providing crucial support for the leap from "quantity" to "quality" in the service sector.
Adhere to quality-first principles to construct new benchmarks for the high-quality development of the service sector. Quality is the foundation of the high-quality development of the service sector. Today, as demand becomes increasingly diversified, personalized, and refined, relying solely on scale expansion and price competition can no longer adapt to the people's growing expectations for high-quality services. Therefore, the service sector must fundamentally transform its developmental logic, taking quality improvement as its core connotation, placing "the pursuit of quality, experience, value, and satisfaction" in a prominent position, and building a new situation where high-quality supply leads demand and excellent experience creates value. To create a high-quality service sector, we must anchor ourselves to people's diverse needs and take the improvement of service quality as a guiding orientation throughout. This orientation is not an abstract concept; it must rely on specific institutional designs, be integrated into clear practice paths, and ultimately be transformed into tangible actions. On one hand, we must establish and improve a modern service quality governance system, covering the entire chain from service standard formulation and process supervision to quality evaluation and rights protection. On the other hand, we must stimulate the endogenous motivation of market entities to pursue excellence. Consideration can be given to improving incentive mechanisms and providing policy support to quality-leading enterprises, making "high quality and fair pricing" a market norm.
Adhere to structural coordination to sketch a new blueprint for a high-quality and efficient service ecosystem. Coordination is the key path for the service sector to leapfrog traditional developmental bottlenecks and move toward high-quality development. What is meant here is no longer a point-by-point optimization of a single field, but a global renovation that reconstructs the service ecosystem with systemic thinking, turning the high-quality and efficient service sector from "scattered puzzle pieces" into an "organic whole." Strengthening the structural coordination of the service industry aims to break the boundaries between different industries, regions, and links, building a new ecosystem of "cross-border integration, resource sharing, and benefit symbiosis." From the perspective of intra-industry coordination, technology services can provide technical solutions for financial institutions, financial services can inject R&D capital into tech enterprises, and logistics services can provide transport channels for the transformation and application of achievements, breaking through single-format development models to form a closed-loop linkage of "technology-finance-logistics." From the perspective of upstream and downstream supply chain coordination, enterprises can achieve seamless connection from "ordering-stocking-shipping-aftersales" through synchronized ordering and inventory sharing mechanisms. From the perspective of inter-regional service coordination, some cities may focus more on high-end services while others handle logistics distribution or customer service outsourcing, forming a new situation of complementary division of labor and resource flow. From the perspective of cross-industry coordination, industrial design empowers the upgrading of manufacturing products, while cold-chain logistics helps raw agricultural products reach the table directly, better achieving the two-way win-win of "services empowering industry and industry driving services."
Coordinating Several Important Relationships
A high-quality and efficient new service system involves both frontier breakthroughs in technological upgrades and format innovation, and deep-seated reforms in institutional perfection, standard construction, and industrial integration. We must persist with systemic thinking and accurately grasp and handle a series of important relationships.
Coordinate the relationship between comprehensive advancement and breakthroughs in key areas. The construction of a new service system must not only avoid the inefficient investment of "sprinkling pepper" [1], but must also achieve an overall improvement by using breakthroughs at specific points to drive the whole. From the dimension of comprehensive advancement, it needs to cover producer services, consumer services, and public services. Producer services should focus on key links such as R&D design, modern logistics, and financial services to strengthen support for the real economy; consumer services should promote the improvement of quality and expansion of capacity in formats such as elderly care, childcare, and cultural tourism to meet the people's needs for a better life; public services must bridge the gaps in education, healthcare, and transportation to achieve balanced development. Breakthroughs in key areas, meanwhile, must target the "chokepoint" links and new growth points of the service industry. On one hand, resources should be concentrated to tackle core technologies in high-end service fields, such as industrial software and smart medical algorithms; on the other hand, the cultivation of new formats such as digital services and green services should be accelerated—for instance, using digital technology to drive AI-assisted design innovation and adhering to the concept of green development to promote the growth of new energy operation and maintenance services. Through breakthrough progress in key areas, we provide replicable experience and strong momentum for comprehensive advancement, ultimately forming a favorable development pattern of "using points to lead the area, and coordinating points and areas."
Coordinate the relationship between improving efficiency and ensuring fairness. The development of the service sector must have both "speed" and "warmth." Fairness without efficiency is fragile and unsustainable, while efficiency without fairness is cold and lacks warmth. A major purpose of improving service efficiency is to release more discretionary free time for people by reducing resource consumption and optimizing service supply modes, thereby more effectively enhancing life quality and the experience of happiness. Fair and inclusive services emphasize letting more people share development opportunities equally. Improving efficiency and ensuring fairness promote each other and are dialectically unified, ultimately finding their footing in people-centered sustainable development. When children in remote areas obtain high-quality education resources through online education, when ordinary laborers obtain developmental channels through vocational training, and when the elderly enjoy a smart-aging life through technological innovation, the fusion of efficiency and fairness is no longer empty talk but a vivid reality. This fusion can bring not only stable economic growth but also inject strong momentum into social development.
Coordinate the relationship between domestic development and opening up to the outside world. The development of the service sector must take root in the domestic market to fortify its foundation, while also deeply integrating into the global economic landscape to expand its space. Basing ourselves domestically is the solid foundation for the opening up of the service sector. We must rely on the advantages of the super-large-scale market composed of over 1.4 billion people to cultivate a group of leading domestic service enterprises with core competitiveness, while accelerating the perfection of the service sector’s standards system to promote the alignment of standards in key areas such as elderly care, healthcare, and cultural tourism with international standards. Expanding opening up is an important driver for the quality improvement and upgrading of the service sector. We must further relax market access in the service sector, launch more open policy measures in fields such as finance, healthcare, and education, actively introduce advanced foreign management expertise, and encourage Chinese service enterprises to "go global," promoting Chinese standards and technologies such as digital payments and infrastructure services to the world, and continuously enhancing the international influence of "China Service."
Focusing on Key Areas to Explore Practical Paths
Standing at a new starting point, we must proceed from a comprehensive, dialectical, and interconnected perspective, fully recognize the arduousness and complexity of building a high-quality and efficient new service system, focus on key areas, take multiple measures, work in coordination, and scientifically explore a practical path that meets the requirements of the New Era.
Focus on high-quality supply to promote the structural optimization and upgrading of the service sector. To promote the quality and efficiency of producer services, we must both strengthen key areas—filling gaps by cultivating research institutions, building smart logistics, and innovating financial products—and promote deep industrial integration, encouraging producer service enterprises and manufacturing enterprises to build mutual construction and sharing mechanisms. To accelerate the quality upgrade of consumer services, we must use diverse needs as a guide to promote the personalization of service supply. Current market trends like private customization can more accurately match the differentiated needs of different groups, making services both warm and targeted. At the same time, we can use the resolution of "pain points" as a starting point to promote the refinement of the service experience. Addressing issues in some fields such as uneven service quality and lack of process transparency, we can effectively enhance consumers' sense of gain and satisfaction by establishing standardized service systems and promoting visualized service processes.
Focus on digital transformation to activate the innovative developmental momentum of the service sector. Accelerate the deep integration of next-generation information technologies like 5G, AI, and big data with the service sector, and cultivate new "AI-native" models and formats. In the sphere of production, vigorously develop AI-native technologies, products, and service systems; accelerate the cultivation of a group of enterprises whose underlying architecture and operational logic are based on AI, and explore entirely new business models; promote the intelligent linkage of all industrial factors, and accelerate the application of AI in all links including design, pilot testing, production, services, and operations. In the sphere of daily life, strengthen the construction of smart consumption infrastructure and expand new service consumption scenarios such as experience consumption, personalized consumption, and emotional consumption. Encourage AI technology to empower fields such as health management, cultural entertainment, and spiritual companionship, tangibly improving the quality of life for residents.
Focus on cross-border integration to expand new spaces for the development of the service sector. Promote the service sector to break traditional industrial boundaries, deepen integration and innovation within itself and across various industries, and build a more vibrant and resilient modern industrial system. Regarding intra-industry integration in the service sector, we should be guided by meeting the diverse and high-quality consumption needs of the people to promote deep integrated development in key areas. Taking the integration of culture and tourism as an example, by deeply mining cultural heritage and local characteristic cultural resources, we can create a multi-in-one immersive product system of "culture + tourism + experience," driving the transformation from traditional scenic sightseeing to all-for-one tourism and deep thematic experiences. In the field of "services + agriculture" integration, the construction of an agricultural socialization service system [2] should be used as a key starting point to drive the transformation and upgrade of agricultural services toward specialization, scale, and standardization. For example, relying on the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain technology, we can build efficient agricultural product supply chain systems from "field to table," thereby effectively reducing circulation loss and increasing product added value.
Focus on standard construction to solidify the foundation for the high-quality development of the service sector. Standardized construction allows high-quality services to have rules to follow and evidence to rely on, tangibly enhancing the people's sense of gain and security. In terms of standard formulation, we should accelerate the filling of standard gaps in key livelihood areas such as elderly care, childcare, and domestic services, as well as high-end service fields like finance, scientific innovation, and digital services, launching a batch of leading national and industrial standards. Actively encourage enterprises to formulate corporate standards higher than national and industrial standards, implement the corporate standard "forerunner" system, and support social organizations and leading enterprises in participating in the formulation and transformation of international standards, promoting the alignment of China's service sector standards with advanced international levels. Promote the implementation of standards, strengthen supervision of their execution, establish and improve a service quality evaluation system involving the government, industry, and society, and refine mechanisms for punishing dishonesty and industry exit. Form a closed-loop management of "execution—evaluation—feedback—improvement" to drive service enterprises toward higher quality and efficiency.