On October 28, the 2025 International Agricultural Services Trade Conference, co-hosted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People's Republic of China and the People's Government of Guangdong Province, and organized by the Foreign Economic Cooperation Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of Guangdong Province, etc., was held in Nansha, Guangzhou. With the theme "Innovation-Driven, Digital and Intelligent Empowerment – Sharing New Opportunities in Global Agricultural Services Trade," the conference focused on cutting-edge fields such as digitalization, intelligence, and greenization, and built a high-level, wide-ranging, and international platform for dialogue and cooperation.

In his speech at the opening ceremony, Zhang Zhili, Member of the Party Leadership Group and Vice Minister of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People's Republic of China, pointed out that China attaches great importance to the development of agricultural services trade. By promoting institutional opening-up in agriculture and increasing agricultural foreign investment, China has created a sound environment and laid a solid foundation for the development of agricultural services trade.

 Zhao Zhongxiu, President of the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), Beijing, was invited to deliver a speech as a guest at the keynote forum of the conference's opening ceremony. Centering on the theme "Promoting the High-Quality Development of China's Agricultural Services Trade," Zhao Zhongxiu put forward policy suggestions for further advancing the "going global" of agricultural services, fostering agricultural services trade into an important growth point of new advantages in agricultural international cooperation and competition, and building a strong agricultural country from the perspectives of the development trends of global and Chinese agricultural services trade, and the practical exploration of enterprises' "going global":

First, we should continuously enhance the global competitiveness of agricultural services, strengthen alignment with international organizations and standards, actively participate in global agricultural governance and standard-setting, and achieve mutual recognition between agricultural technical standards and international standards.

Second, we should fully leverage mature technologies such as remote sensing monitoring, meteorological services, IoT data collection, intelligent diagnosis of plant diseases and insect pests, and yield and fertilizer decision-making, integrate them deeply with local agricultural practices, and drive the digital transformation of traditional agricultural services.

Third, we should improve the policy system and guarantee system for agricultural services trade, enhance policy precision, and form greater policy synergy.

Fourth, we should strengthen the efficiency of the inter-departmental working mechanism for services trade, improve the coordination mechanism among multiple departments including agricultural authorities, commerce, customs, quality inspection, financial supervision, and foreign affairs, sort out and optimize key links such as agricultural project approval, technical certification, taxation, and foreign exchange management, remove inter-departmental bottlenecks from agricultural services to trade, and promote cross-regional policy coordination.

Ministers and Vice Ministers of Agriculture from 6 countries including the Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Uganda, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Thailand, diplomatic envoys of relevant countries in China, representatives from relevant provinces, research institutions, social organizations, and enterprises in China, as well as representatives from regional organizations and transnational agricultural-related enterprises, totaling nearly 200 participants from 15 countries (international institutions), attended the conference. They jointly discussed the development of global agricultural services trade, and pooled consensus and strength to promote global food security and the transformation of the agri-food system.