The fifth China International Service Outsourcing Cooperation Conference kicked off in Nanjing, Jiangsu province on June 19.

More than 700 companies from 21 countries and regions attended the event, said Yu Zhen, inspector of the province's Department of Commerce.

Jiangsu is home to three of China's 21 model cities for the service outsourcing industry - Nanjing, Suzhou and Wuxi.

The province's service outsourcing sector began to take off in 2007. In 2011, Jiangsu's offshore service outsourcing deals reached $6.38 billion, a rise of 57 percent compared to the previous year.

For the first four months of 2012, the value of service outsourcing contracts rose 43 percent to $6.83 billion, and the value of executed deals grew 34.7 percent over the previous year to hit $5.27 billion.

As of the end of April, a total of 5,607 service outsourcing companies had registered in the province, and they now employ more than 720,000 people, Yu said.

Jiangsu aims to make itself into China's most competitive services outsourcing province. It plans to see the value of service outsourcing contracts reach $30 billion by 2015, with the value of executed contracts expected to hit $25 billion, Yu said.

By 2015, the province is expected to breed five service outsourcing giants that each have an export capacity over $100 million, train 600,000 professionals and employ 800,000 college graduates in this sector, Yu said.

Meanwhile, China's service outsourcing contracts were worth $44.73 billion in 2011, and the value of contracts executed that year came to $32.39 billion, an increase of about 63 percent, said Qiu Hong, assistant minister of commerce, at the opening ceremony of conference.

As for offshore service outsourcing deals, the value of China's offshore deals reached $23.83 billion in 2011, accounting for 23.2 percent of the world's total of $102.6 billion, Qiu said.

At the end of 2011, there were nearly 17,000 outsourcing companies in China, employing 3.18 million people, Qiu said.

The world's potential service outsourcing demand is expected to reach $1.65 trillion to $1.8 trillion by 2020, said Qiu.

yuhongyan@chinadaily.com.cn