Educational service trade is an emerging but indispensable part of international service trade. In the new era，the scale and quality of China’s educational service trade have developed simultaneously. The quantity of students going abroad and overseas students returning to China have both increased，the scale and structure of international students in China have both improved. However，problems still exist in the development of China’s educational service trade，such as an expanding trade deficit in service for studying abroad，a still unreasonable structure of international students in China，an unbalanced development of different forms of educational service trade，etc. The promotion of “the Belt and Road” initiative provides new opportunities for bilateral and multilateral educational service trade cooperation，the development of big data and Internet have broadened the educational service trade field，the emergence of the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020 has broken the stable development of China’s educational service trade，and the rules of educational service trade are being reconstructed under the impact of deglobalization. The high-quality development of China’s educational service trade can be promoted in three aspects：enhancing the internationalization of education and educational brands；implementing convergent management of Chinese and foreign students and promoting two-way communication；driving the innovative development of educational service trade with technology.