Abstract: In recent years, China's trade deficit in tourism services to Japan has continued to expand, and the sudden outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia epidemic makes the bilateral trade in tourism services even worse. In the post epidemic era, promoting Sino-Japanese tourism service trade and strengthening Sino-Japanese economic and trade cooperation is particularly important. Based on the current situation and characteristics of tourism trade between China and Japan after the 21st century, combined with trade theory and grey correlation analysis method, this paper focuses on the motivation and influencing factors of the formation of Sino-Japanese tourism service intra industry trade. It is believed that the Sino-Japanese tourism service trade under the guidance of overlapping demand has experienced the development stage of “from inter industry to intra industry to inter industry”, showing that China's deficit continues to expand. The differences of international tourism market scale, market opening, and residents' income level between China and Japan are the three core factors leading to the imbalance of intra industry trade level of tourism services between the two countries. Obviously, in the post epidemic era, China urgently needs to improve the quality of tourism services, reduce the barriers to trade in services, establish new advantages of domestic tourism, and enhance the level of intra industry trade in tourism services between China and Japan.

Key words: China and Japan, intra industry trade in tourism services, trade imbalance, influencing factors