China’s AI+ Strategy: Roadmap, Goals, and Industry Opportunities

01 Overall Goal: Three‑Stage Development Path

The State Council’s "AI+" action plan sets three milestones: by 2027, AI will be deeply integrated with six key sectors and the adoption rate of next‑generation intelligent terminals and agents will exceed 70%; by 2030, adoption will surpass 90% and AI will drive high‑quality development; by 2035, China will fully enter a new stage of an intelligent economy and society, supporting the achievement of modern socialist modernization.

02 Six Key Actions

AI+ Science and Technology aims to accelerate scientific discovery, innovate R&D models, and enhance research methods in philosophy and social sciences.

AI+ Industrial Development will foster new native AI business models, promote full‑factor intelligent manufacturing, accelerate digital transformation in agriculture, and create novel service industry models.

AI+ Consumer Upgrade focuses on expanding AI‑enabled service scenarios and cultivating new consumer‑oriented business formats.

AI+ Public Welfare seeks smarter work and learning methods and a higher‑quality lifestyle.

AI+ Governance Capability aims to create a human‑machine co‑governance model and a diversified, collaborative governance framework.

AI+ Global Cooperation will promote inclusive AI sharing and help build a global AI governance system.

03 Eight Fundamental Support Capabilities

The plan identifies eight core capabilities: improving model fundamentals, innovating data supply, strengthening coordinated intelligent computing resources, optimizing the application development environment, fostering open‑source ecosystems, building talent pools, ensuring policy and legal safeguards, and enhancing security capabilities.

In computing resources, China will back AI‑chip breakthroughs, nurture enabling software ecosystems, accelerate ultra‑large‑scale AI computing clusters, and improve the national integrated computing network, leveraging the "East‑Data West‑Compute" hub model for coordinated data, compute, power, and networking resources.

04 Industry Impact and Opportunities

Experts predict the "AI+" initiative will benefit multiple links of the AI industry chain. According to Pu Songtao, director of the Future Industry Research Center at the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, consumer and industrial applications will scale first, with AI information services leading consumer demand and intelligent robots driving industrial adoption.

Three chain segments will see the greatest gains: computing‑related (AI chips, servers, compute service centers), data‑related (data labeling, cleaning, warehousing), and algorithm‑related (AI software, algorithm optimization services).

05 Support Measures and Development Environment

To create a favorable application environment, China will continuously refine relevant laws, regulations, policies, standards, and ethical guidelines, increase financial and fiscal support for AI, improve tolerance for experimental applications, and encourage open‑door, real‑open scenarios.

Government agencies and state‑owned enterprises will play demonstrative roles, supporting technology deployment through open scenarios, while the ecosystem will be nurtured by promoting full‑factor intelligent development, cultivating AI service providers, and building a robust AI service chain.

Simultaneously, measures will be taken to mitigate security risks associated with AI.

Future Outlook

By 2027, the penetration of next‑generation intelligent terminals and agents is expected to exceed 70%; by 2030, it will rise above 90%.

China already has more than 300 listed AI companies, contributing roughly 70% of the sector’s total revenue, with unicorns concentrated in large‑model development, autonomous driving, intelligent robotics, business intelligence applications, and AI‑compute chips.

The implementation of the "AI+" plan will reshape work, learning, and lifestyle, steering the nation toward a fully realized intelligent economy and society.