China’s Journey to a Service Society

China's once strong agricultural sector is steadily losing importance and in 2019 was responsible for only around 7.1 percent of the country’s GDP. The industrial sector, which has long been the mainstay of the Chinese economy, is also losing relevance. In short, China is well on the way to becoming a service society. In 2019, almost 54 percent of GDP was created through services, according to the World Bank. Thus, the country is moving closer structurally to Western and other developed economies, where this changeover occurred earlier.

Since 1978, the gross domestic product of the People's Republic of China has risen from $223 to $7,603 per capita despite the fact that the country’s the population grew by almost 400 million people in the same time frame. With action plans such as "Made in China 2025", China is promoting its transformation into a modern industrial and service nation. China’s economy also proved to be quite resilient during the coronavirus crisis, bouncing back faster than others. The International Monetary Fund is forecasting a 3 percent decline in China’s real economic output compared with last year, making China one of the few countries that could record positive growth even in the coronavirus year 2020.