Beijing. In the Asian giant, a territory with more than 9.6 million square kilometers and 1.4 billion inhabitants, artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing at full speed, it is used massively, in practically all areas of daily life.
The value of related industries is estimated to exceed 10 trillion yuan, about $1.37 trillion, by the end of the government’s 15th five-year plan period in 2030, according to the country’s National Development and Reform Commission.
This technology is used for basic activities, such as a personal virtual assistant, with applications such as Doubao or DeepSeek (similar to ChatGPT), but it also manages traffic in large cities through smart traffic lights that analyze the flow of cars; It entertains with its short series on the Internet and is part of education, work and medicine.
According to the country’s Academy of Cyberspace Studies, 60 percent of patents related to AI in the world are Chinese, the official media CGTN reported. The Ministry of Information Technology maintained that last year more than 6 thousand signatures in this matter were registered in the country.
Children, young people and adults use it as a tool to study, investigate and resolve practically any doubt; AI is present in online shopping, an activity in which the software makes suggestions to users; in videos with AI they feed social networks, while facial recognition in public buildings is common, and in the management of patient files in health centers, among others. For specialists such as Cui Yan, dean of the China-Germany Institute of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Wuvi, this industry is in “the global focus” and in the Asian giant it is one of those that leads, along with the United States. Despite this, he warned that AI should not be “deified or demonized.”
Any new technology, highlighted the deputy for Guangdong, is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it benefits humanity, but, on the other, it must be well regulated through legislation.
In this sense, he stated that the Asian country also stands out in this matter, as it was one of the first to approve laws and regulations to guarantee the security of artificial intelligence, data protection and the rights and interests of people, as well as to promote technological innovation.
In 2023, President Xi Jinping’s government established that content prohibited by laws and administrative regulations should not be generated with AI, such as those that incite the subversion of the political power of the State, overthrow the socialist regime, promote terrorism, extremism, violence, obscenity and pornography, as well as false and harmful information.
He specified that intellectual property, business ethics and trade secrets must be respected; not take advantage of algorithms, data, platforms, among others, to carry out monopolies and acts of unfair competition.
One of the provinces that is a pioneer in the field of AI is Guangdong, in southern China, which has the highest gross domestic product in the entire country. In the recent five years it increased to 14.58 trillion yuan (2.1 trillion dollars), according to the Xinhua agency, and concentrates technological giants, especially in Shenzhen, such as Huawei, Tencent, DJI (drones) and BYD (electric vehicles + AI).
Advances continue to drive China not to give up in the development of this technology, and therefore in its 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), discussed and approved this week within the framework of the National People’s Assembly, it proposes that AI be used in the evolution of basic science, transform traditional and cutting-edge industries, create new consumption scenarios, innovate governance and continue to enrich daily life.
