As an important component of service trade and a key path for realizing digital trade, the strategic position of service outsourcing is becoming increasingly prominent.

Against the backdrop of profound changes in the global economic landscape and accelerated evolution of digital technology, what new opportunities and challenges are China's service outsourcing industry facing? How can we embark on the path of high-quality development for service outsourcing?

These were the topics of common concern among representatives from the Ministry of Commerce, research institutions, industry alliances, and enterprises at the recently held 2026 Forum on High-quality Development of Service Outsourcing and the Annual Meeting of the Zhongguancun Zhike Service Outsourcing Industry Alliance.

Zhang Yijin, Deputy Director of the Second Division of the Department of Trade in Services of the Ministry of Commerce, stated that a series of key policies introduced at the national level recently, especially the "Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the Cultivation and Opening of Scenarios to Promote the Large-scale Application of New Scenarios" issued by the General Office of the State Council and the "Action Plan for Promoting the High-quality Development of Service Outsourcing" jointly issued by the Ministry of Commerce and other five departments, have expanded the application space for the industry, injected strong momentum, and clarified development goals. At the same time, he called on the industry to adhere to innovation-driven development, open cooperation, standards-led progress, talent-oriented approach, and regional collaboration, actively seize the opportunities in the inaugural year of the 14th Five-Year Plan, and promote the industry's development towards digitalization, intelligence, integration, and greenification.

Amidst the surging tide of the global digital economy, the rapid iteration and deep penetration of artificial intelligence technology have not only reshaped the value chain and development landscape of the service outsourcing industry, but also broken through traditional industry bottlenecks, endowing the industry with powerful digital wings for transformation and upgrading, and propelling service outsourcing to transition from being cost-driven to value-creating.

The United States is one of the important markets for China's service outsourcing. Zheng Jinrong, Director of the Service Economy Research Department at the China Service Outsourcing Research Center, analyzed that the Sino-US trade war has extended from trade in goods to the field of trade in services. Looking ahead, Sino-US trade in services will develop amidst twists and turns, with dynamic game theory becoming the norm, and digital trade led by artificial intelligence will become the main battlefield. He called on the industry to accelerate the formulation of relevant standards and suggested exploring "large model as a service training" as a new business format standard for service outsourcing.

Du Xinkai, Vice President of Wanlian Yida Holding Group Co., Ltd., proposed that the industry no longer needs a single technology or tool, but rather an "AI productivity tool" that can meet the needs of digital transformation in a one-stop manner. However, currently, general-purpose large models struggle to penetrate the logic of industries, while vertical large models are unable to address complex issues across industrial chains. To this end, Wanlian Yida has launched the industrial AI super carrier - "Wanlian Moore" full-industry large model, which is built based on an industrial ontology map covering 97 industry categories. It aims to address challenges such as the fracture of technology and industrial chains, data silos, and mismatch between capability supply and demand.

Li Pengtao, Chief Technology Officer of Beijing Digital Weft Technology Co., Ltd., presented on the topic of "Educational Intelligent Agents Driven by DeepSeek: From Private Deployment to Scenario Application Practice". He proposed that the future may usher in the "era of intelligent agents", and the form of service outsourcing may also evolve from human outsourcing to intelligent agent services. However, currently, building intelligent agents for enterprises still faces practical challenges such as complex data, high requirements, model hallucinations, and significant engineering challenges, which constitute the "impossible triangle". This requires the combination of "AI architects" who understand both AI and the industry, along with a scientific construction process, to ensure that projects are truly implemented and customers are satisfied.

Cui Xiangyu, Vice President of Beijing Haitian Ruisheng Technology Co., Ltd., believes that data annotation, as an important form of service outsourcing, is experiencing explosive demand alongside the development of artificial intelligence. Among them, industry data and embodied intelligence data will become the growth focus in 2026. The company has established a "123456" methodology for high-quality datasets and promoted it as a "top priority project". He believes that high-quality datasets are the cornerstone for the application of large models and intelligent agents in the industry, and calls on more enterprises to pay attention to the field of artificial intelligence data and build their own high-quality datasets.

Ma Qiao, CEO of Beijing Yunwoke Digital Technology Co., Ltd., introduced the practice of information technology overseas services in the era of AI coding. Yunwoke's ClouderWork digital intelligence capability service platform mainly focuses on the field of software crowdsourcing, delivering digital capability services through a crowdsourcing model. The platform brings together over 1.2 million trusted digital developers, forming a delivery and management system that covers the entire software lifecycle, supports multiple languages, and facilitates cross-cultural collaboration. Amidst the wave of AI, it deeply integrates AI coding tools and development processes, and conducts standardized evaluations of developer capabilities based on the EU's ECF talent framework. Meanwhile, it combines blockchain technology to achieve trusted certification of skills, providing a new model for the global and intelligent delivery of software outsourcing.

The application of AI technology in risk management for enterprises expanding overseas is becoming increasingly widespread. Yu Wanli, dean of the China Security International Public Security Research Institute, frankly stated that the political and security risks faced by enterprises expanding overseas are rapidly escalating, and traditional risk management methods are no longer adequate to cope with them. Enterprises need to shift from "passive response" to "active management," and AI technology provides new tools for this purpose. The overseas security risk management system established by his research institute utilizes AI technology to achieve real-time retrieval of global open-source intelligence, automatic multilingual translation, and intelligent analysis. This system is capable of dynamically monitoring and warning against risks such as political unrest, social events, and natural disasters in specific countries. "Combining AI with professional security analysis can help enterprises build a smarter and more efficient overseas security risk prevention and control system, providing support for industries with high internationalization levels such as the service outsourcing industry as they expand overseas," said Yu Wanli.