China’s AI Plus Initiative Enters Commercial Phase
China’s “AI Plus” (人工智能+) initiative has officially entered a new phase, shifting from pilot programs to comprehensive, nationwide commercial implementation. The upgrade, announced following an April 2026 Central Politburo meeting, signals that artificial intelligence is no longer an experimental add-on but a core engine of China’s economic development strategy, according to Economic Daily via Xinhua News.
From Pilot to National Strategy
The April 2026 Central Politburo meeting formally called for “comprehensively implementing the ‘AI Plus’ action,” upgrading the previous language of “deepening and expanding.” This shift represents a qualitative change in China’s approach to AI deployment.
“Proposing the comprehensive implementation of the ‘AI Plus’ action means the top-level design has taken shape, the technology foundation has been consolidated, and industrial application conditions have matured,” said Zhu Keli, Founding Dean of the Guoyan New Economy Research Institute. “It is no longer limited to pilot projects in individual fields or regions, but has risen to a normalized strategic deployment covering the entire nation, all industries, and all scenarios.”
By the Numbers: China’s AI Scale
The scale of China’s AI ecosystem is substantial. The country’s AI core industry has surpassed 1.2 trillion yuan (approximately US$166 billion), with over 6,000 AI enterprises operating nationwide, as reported by Xinhua and Tsinghua University. China has also become the world’s largest AI patent holder, accounting for 60% of global AI patents.
AI adoption among Chinese consumers and workers has reached remarkable levels. The country now has 440 million monthly active users of AI-native apps, with daily token consumption reaching approximately 140 trillion. In the workplace, 93% of Chinese respondents reported using AI tools, far exceeding the global average of 58%.
Falling Costs, Rising Access
A key driver of this acceleration has been the dramatic reduction in AI model costs. According to the Economic Daily report, the average cost per million tokens has dropped from US$60 in early 2022 to under US$1 today, removing a major barrier to mass adoption.
Zhang Yaqin, Founding Dean of Tsinghua University’s Institute for AI Industry Research (AIR), noted that DeepSeek’s breakthroughs mark a differentiated path for Chinese AI. “China is turning to embrace lighter models, smarter architectures, higher efficiency, and lower prices,” Zhang said, adding that compared to China’s “zero participation” in the first two industrial revolutions and being a “follower” in the third, “in the fourth industrial revolution with AI as the underlying technology, China is entirely likely to be at the forefront.”
Industry Integration Accelerates
The policy shift has moved from supporting technology R&D alone to an integrated push encompassing technology普及, business cultivation, scenario implementation, and ecosystem construction. Xiao Xue, Chief Engineer of Inspur Group, emphasized that “‘AI Plus’ means deep coupling of technology and industry. It must take root in the fertile soil of industry and serve real economic needs.”
Huawei’s China Enterprise Business Vice President Guo Zhenxing declared 2026 the year of the “industry + AI” leap, noting that AI value is now quantifiable, enterprise investment willingness has increased, and scenario-based AI solutions are replicable across industries.
National Standards and Governance
In a parallel development, China released the “AI Terminal Intelligence Grading” national standards (GB/Z 177-2026) on May 8, 2026, jointly launched by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Commerce, and the State Administration for Market Regulation, as reported by People’s Post via Xinhua. The standards adopt a “2+N” architecture with L1 to L4 grading levels, covering smartphones, computers, televisions, smart eyewear, automotive cockpits, speakers, and headphones.
On governance, Xiao Xue argued that “safety is not a post-hoc patch but an inherent component of the entire R&D process,” calling for safety requirements to be embedded into the full lifecycle of AI development, training, deployment, and application.
Strategic Context
China’s AI push comes amid slowing economic growth, ongoing US trade tensions, and export controls on advanced semiconductors. The State Council’s August 2025 Opinions on deeply implementing the “AI Plus” action set ambitious targets: 70% penetration of AI applications by 2027, 90% by 2030, and a fully realized smart economy by 2035.
What’s Next
As China moves from the “Chat” paradigm to the “Agent” era, the competition has shifted toward autonomous AI systems that can set tasks, plan paths, and learn from feedback. The country’s open-source AI dominance, with Chinese models accumulating over 10 billion global downloads, positions it uniquely in the global AI landscape. However, questions remain about how US semiconductor export controls will affect computing infrastructure scaling and whether China’s governance framework can keep pace with the risks of autonomous AI agents at scale.
For now, the message from Beijing is clear: AI is no longer the future — it is the present foundation of China’s economic strategy.