China's Minister of Commerce Chen Deming on Tuesday urged the promotion of global service trade as an important approach to revive the world economy.

Speaking at an industrial conference held here Tuesday, the minister said the world economy was already on a steady path of recovery, but revival of international trade would take a longer time.

Chen said promoting the development of an open service industry might be a major force in leading global economic recovery.

He forecast the country's service imports would reach 1 trillion U.S. dollars in the next five years, which could mean huge business potentials for service providers across the globe.

But he warned the process of pushing forward the service sector could be impeded by trade protectionism in more complex forms, due to the less obvious and unquantitative features of service trade barriers.