Drawing upon output, employment, consumption and trade data, this article examtnes whether there is an economic tertiarization trend in China ＇s economy and evaluates the common factors driving current trends. It shows that the tertiarization trend is evident for the overall economy and most regions in terms of the service nominal value-added ratio and service employment and consumption. However, the tertiarization trend is not significant in terms of the service real value-added ratio, and there is even some concurrent ＂detertiarization ＂ because of the decreasing proportion of services in imports and exports. lndeed, China ＇s tertiarization trend is far behind its industrialization trend The rise in the relative prices of services explains the rising proportion of household service consumption expenditure and further illuminates why the service real value-added ratio has not grown. The main cause for the growing percentage of service employment is the lag in service labor productivity growth in interaction with the price inelasticity of service demand ＂Cost disease ＂ has appeared in service consumption.
In the present study, five stylized facts about China ＂s producer services are established through international, intersectoral and intertemporal comparisons based on input --output tables. First, the overall service input ratio is the lowest in all the sample economies. Second, most producer services are supplied by the traditional labor-intensive sectors. Third, manufacturing is the biggest user of producer services, and service industry is the second, while the opposite is true for most of the other sample economies. Fourth, unlike other economies, China ＂s ＂R＆D＂ is characterized more by consumer services than producer services. Fifth, China has fairly lower service input ratios in almost all the industries. The backward and forward linkages coefficients are both smaller for ＂real estate activities＂ and ＂finance and insurance. ＂＂ Policy reform should focus not only on specific producer services but also on reducing obstacles that are inhibiting the balanced development of diverse producer services that will help China to optimize its economic structure.
