Artificial intelligence industry in China
The roots of the development of artificial intelligence in the People's Republic of China started in the late 1970s following Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms emphasizing science and technology as the country's primary productive force. The initial stages of China's AI development were slow and encountered significant challenges due to lack of resources and talent. At the beginning China was behind most Western countries in terms of AI development. A majority of the research was led by scientists who had received higher education abroad. Since 2006, the Chinese government has steadily developed a national agenda for artificial intelligence development and emerged as one of the leading nations in artificial intelligence research and development. In 2016, the Chinese Communist Party released its thirteenth five-year plan in which it aimed to become a global AI leader by 2030. China is now considered a world leader in AI technology along with the United States.
The State Council has a list of "national AI teams" including fifteen China-based companies, including Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, SenseTime, and iFlytek. Each company should lead the development of a designated specialized AI sector in China, such as facial recognition, software/hardware, and speech recognition. China's rapid AI development has significantly impacted Chinese society in many areas, including the socio-economic, military, intelligence, and political spheres. Agriculture, transportation, accommodation and food services, and manufacturing are the top industries that would be the most impacted by further AI deployment. The private sector, university laboratories, and the military are working collaboratively in many aspects as there are few current existing boundaries.
In 2021, China published the Data Security Law of the People's Republic of China, its first national law addressing AI-related ethical concerns. In October 2022, the United States federal government announced a series of export controls and trade restrictions intended to restrict China's access to advanced computer chips for AI applications. In 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued guidelines requiring that AI content upholds the ideology of the CCP including Core Socialist Values, avoids discrimination, respects intellectual property rights, and safeguards user data. In 2025, the Chinese government issued a document regarding training data, requiring companies to use as little as data deemed "unsafe" as possible, as well as requiring companies to test models regularly.
Concerns have been raised about the effects of the Chinese government's censorship regime on the development of generative artificial intelligence and long-term talent acquisition with state of the country's demographics. Others have noted that official notions of AI safety require following the priorities of the CCP and are antithetical to standards in democratic societies and raised concerns about the extension of China's system of mass surveillance and censorship abroad.
History
The Chinese term for artificial intelligence connotes "humanmade" intelligence. The term developed as mid-20th century localisation of the Japanese term jinko chino.The research and development of artificial intelligence in China started in the 1980s, with the announcement by Deng Xiaoping of the importance of science and technology for China's economic growth.
Late 1970s to early 2010s
Chinese artificial intelligence research and development began in late 1970s after Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up. China's first national conference on AI occurred in 1979. Academic journals in the late 1970s began publishing literature reviews of Western research on AI topics.In the 1980s, a group of Chinese scientists launched AI research led by Qian Xuesen and Wu Wenjun. However, during the time, China's society still had a generally conservative view towards AI. In the early 1980s, Science Press published translated versions of Western textbooks such as Patrick Winston's Artificial Intelligence and Nils John Nilsson's Principles of Artificial Intelligence. In 1980, a journal of the Chinese Academy of Sciences convened its first annual National Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, which included national and international scholars like Herbert A. Simon.
The Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence was founded in September 1981 and was authorized by the Ministry of Civil Affairs. CAAI has continued to be the largest AI association in China as of 2025. In 1982, CAAI began publishing the Artificial Intelligence Journal, which published early AI research by Chinese academics.
In the 1980s, Chinese research on AI was influenced by the field of cybernetics, particularly the work of Norbert Weiner and his text Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Chinese researchers at the time sought to situate AI as part of a broader "Intelligence Science" field which would include disciplines like mathematics, computer science, cognitive science, social sciences, and philosophy.
In 1987, Tsinghua University began a research publication on AI.
Beginning in 1993, smart automation and intelligence have been part of China's national technology plan.
Since the 2000s, the Chinese government has further expanded its research and development funds for AI and the number of government-sponsored research projects has dramatically increased. In 2006, China announced a policy priority for the development of artificial intelligence, which was included in the National Medium and Long Term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology, released by the State Council. In the same year, artificial intelligence was also mentioned in the eleventh five-year plan.
In 2011, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence established a branch in Beijing, China. At same year, the Wu Wenjun Artificial Intelligence Science and Technology Award was founded in honor of Chinese mathematician Wu Wenjun, and it became the highest award for Chinese achievements in the field of artificial intelligence. The first award ceremony was held on May 14, 2012. In 2013, the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence was held in Beijing, marking the first time the conference was held in China. This event coincided with the Chinese government's announcement of the "Chinese Intelligence Year," a significant milestone in China's development of artificial intelligence.
Late 2010s to early 2020s
AI became a major issue of commercial, public, and political focus in China in the latter half of the 2010s. Various interpretations of the primary cause for this increased focus exist, with some analyses focusing on the 2016 Go match between Google's AlphaGo and Lee Sedol, others emphasising the U.S. increasing trade restrictions on China's technology industries and the desire to achieve national technological self-sufficiency.The State Council of China issued "A Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" on 20 July 2017. In the document, the CCP Central Committee and the State Council urged governing bodies in China to promote the development of artificial intelligence. Specifically, the plan described AI as a strategic technology that has become a "focus of international competition".:2 The document urged significant investment in a number of strategic areas related to AI and called for close cooperation between the state and private sectors. It set the goal of China becoming the preeminent country for AI research and application by 2030.
During the general secretaryship of Xi Jinping, artificial intelligence has been a focus of the CCP's military-civil fusion efforts. On the occasion of Xi's speech at the first plenary meeting of the Central Military-Civil Fusion Development Committee, scholars from the National Defense University wrote in the PLA Daily that the "transferability of social resources" between economic and military ends is an essential component to being a great power. During the Two Sessions 2017,"artificial intelligence plus" was proposed to be elevated to a strategic level. The same year witnessed the emergence of multiple application-level usages in the medical field according to reports.
In 2018, Xinhua News Agency, in partnership with Tencent's subsidiary Sogou, launched its first artificial intelligence-generated news anchor.
In 2018, the State Council budgeted $2.1 billion for an AI industrial park in Mentougou district. In order to achieve this the State Council stated the need for massive talent acquisition, theoretical and practical developments, as well as public and private investments. Some of the stated motivations that the State Council gave for pursuing its AI strategy include the potential of artificial intelligence for industrial transformation, better social governance and maintaining social stability. As of the end of 2020, Shanghai's Pudong District had 600 AI companies across foundational, technical, and application layers, with related industries valued at around 91 billion yuan.
In 2019, the application of artificial intelligence expanded to various fields such as quantum physics, geography, and medical research. With the emergence of large language models, at the beginning of 2020, Chinese researchers began developing their own LLMs. One such example is the multimodal large model called 'Zidongtaichu.'
The Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence launched China's first large scale pre-trained language model in 2022.
In November 2022, the Cyberspace Administration of China, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued the regulations concerning deepfakes, which became effective in January 2023.
In July 2023, Huawei released its version 3.0 of its Pangu LLM.
In July 2023, China released its Interim Measures for the Administration of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services. A draft proposal on basic generative AI services safety requirements, including specifications for data collection and model training was issued in October 2023.
Also in October 2023, the Chinese government launched its Global AI Governance Initiative, which frames its AI policy as part of a Community of Common Destiny and aims to build AI policy dialogue with developing countries. The Initiative has expressed concern over AI safety risks, including abuse of data or the use of AI by terrorists.
In 2024, Spamouflage, an online disinformation and propaganda campaign of the Ministry of Public Security, began using news anchors created with generative artificial intelligence to deliver fake news clips.
In March 2024, Premier Li Qiang launched the AI+ Initiative, which intends to integrate AI into China's real economy.
In May 2024, the Cyberspace Administration of China announced that it rolled out a large language model trained on Xi Jinping Thought.
According to the 2024 report from the International Data Corporation, Baidu AI Cloud holds China's largest LLM market share with 19.9 percent and US$49 million in revenue over the last year. This was followed by SenseTime, with 16 percent market share, and by Zhipu AI, as the third largest. The fourth and fifth largest were Baichuan and the Hong-Kong listed AI company 4Paradigm respectively. Baichuan, Zhipu AI, Moonshot AI and MiniMax were praised by investors as China's new "AI Tigers". In April 2024, 117 generative AI models had been approved by the Chinese government.
As of 2024, many Chinese technology firms such as Zhipu AI and Bytedance have launched AI video-generation tools to rival OpenAI's Sora.