Maintaining effective services trade in particular is a critical component of economic activity among member economies, as evidenced by the importance of services to GDP in Figure 2. In Hong Kong, China, services value added8 represents approximately 93 percent of all economic activity. On average, services value added represents around 60 percent of all
economic activity in the APEC region. Given how central the services sector is to these economies, and how essential telecommunications has been in enabling cross-border trade in services, any viable strategy to eliminate supply chain chokepoints and facilitate cross-border trade must therefore include efforts to maintain and/or improve the telecommunications infrastructure.