BEIJING -- China continued to see a deficit in international service trade in the first two months of 2022, data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed Thursday.

Service trade exports stood at 411 billion yuan ($64.6 billion) during the January-February period, while imports came in at 485.9 billion yuan, resulting in a deficit of 74.9 billion yuan.

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

In the first two months, China saw a surplus of 548.3 billion yuan in the international trade of goods. Total international trade in goods and services amounted to 6.81 trillion yuan, up 15 percent year-on-year.