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China’s AI: from breakthroughs to deep integration
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The year 2025 marked a pivotal shift in China’s AI landscape, moving decisively from foundational breakthroughs to deep, pragmatic integration of artificial intelligence across industry and daily life.
Central to this transition was the significant leap in so-called large language models, where machines are fed vast amount of data to create a “digital brain” capable of duplicating many complex human functions. Flagship systems from Chinese companies such as DeepSeek, Alibaba, Huawei and Baidu turned a page on the development of machine models and pushed the boundaries of their capabilities.
This technical progress directly fueled what China calls its AI Plus initiative, which seeks to transition artificial intelligence from the theoretical to the practical, with mass adoption across all sectors. AI is now a standard feature in smart manufacturing, consumer electronics and intelligent vehicles.
Continuing this thread, the 15th Five-Year (2026-30) Plan sets ambitious goals for AI. It seeks to boost the rate of AI agents and smart terminal use to 70 percent by 2027 and to 90 percent by 2030.
Research firm International Data Corp has highlighted the dramatic increase in “machine thinking” and ease-of-use across game, mobile office, education, smart transportation and home appliance management sectors.
AI is also opening new horizons for discoveries in biopharmaceuticals and advanced industrial materials, and for the application of “embodied intelligence” to create humanoid robots. Robots from companies like AgiBot and Unitree may awe the public when they dance, run races and play football, but their emergence on the scene goes beyond entertainment, promising to transform how we learn, how we clean our homes, how we move goods, how we tend crops and how we care for the aged and disabled. Robots are even being designed to be emotional companions.
Amid China’s rush to be a leader in world technology runs a deep desire to make the country more self-sufficient and less reliant on the vagaries of a shifting world order. But the government is keenly aware that the speed of AI development poses risks. It has set up systems to ward off “deep fakes” and scams easily generated by malevolent use of AI-generated content. It has stepped up protections for the security of personal data.
China is smoothing the path for AI pathfinders to obtain funds for research and development by setting up the STAR market in Shanghai to host promising startups with promising technologies. So-called “China Nvidias” Moore Threads and MetaX joined Cambricon in the market with dazzling share debuts, underscoring the national drive to fill a void created by US chip-export restrictions.
Looking ahead to 2026, the AI focus is expected to shift from sheer model capability to seamless, trustworthy and energy-efficient integration.
Experts predict a surge in truly AI-native applications, major breakthroughs in embodied intelligence for tackling complex environments, and intensified global collaboration in trying to establish global ethical standards for AI applications.
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