China's trade in services sustained its growth momentum in the first half of 2023, with cumulative trade value growing 8.5 percent year-on-year and reaching 3.14 trillion yuan ($437.58 billion), data from the Ministry of Commerce released on Thursday showed.

In the meantime, trade in knowledge-intensive services expanded 12.3 percent year-on-year to 1.36 trillion yuan.

The figure accounted for 43.5 percent of the country's total volume of services trade, up 1.5 percentage points from the same period last year.

Travel services saw a notable recovery between January and June, with trade in this sector soaring 65.4 percent on a yearly basis to 650.94 billion yuan.

In contrast to goods trade, trade in services refers to the sale and delivery of intangible services such as transportation, finance, tourism, telecommunications, construction, advertising, computing and accounting.