China posts service trade deficit in January

China's foreign trade in services had a deficit of 81.4 billion yuan (13.3 billion U.S. dollars) in January, said the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) on Tuesday.

The country's income from trade in services stood at 113.6 billion yuan in the first month of this year, and the expenditure reached 195 billion yuan, according the data released by the administration.

The SAFE will issue statistics on trade in services every month starting from January this year, to "improve the transparency of balance of payments," as trade in services takes up a big part of this.