Breakthroughs in AI Commercialization

As of March this year, China’s artificial intelligence (AI) commercialization has achieved significant breakthroughs, with daily token usage exceeding 140 trillion, representing a growth of over 40% compared to the end of last year. AI development is empowering various industries, leading to rapid growth in related fields. In the first quarter, the value added of large-scale digital product manufacturing increased by 11.2% year-on-year, with the value added in the manufacturing of electronic materials and integrated circuits directly related to AI production and application growing by 32.5% and 49.4%, respectively. The impact of AI is also extending to upstream industries that provide raw materials and energy, such as chemicals and power.

Experts indicate that AI is accelerating its deep integration into the real economy, bringing significant innovation opportunities for high-quality economic and social development, and becoming a key driver for cultivating new productive forces and reshaping competitive advantages.

Creating a Positive Cycle

Tokens are the smallest basic units of information processed by AI models. Each interaction between users and AI essentially represents an exchange of computational resources and data value, with tokens serving as the settlement unit.

Since the beginning of this year, intelligent agents such as “lobster” have significantly increased token consumption. Data shows that the average daily token usage in China was 100 billion at the beginning of 2024 and is expected to leap to 100 trillion by the end of 2025, having already surpassed 140 trillion as of March this year.

“This data clearly indicates that large models and various AI applications have truly moved out of the laboratory and into enterprise production and everyday life. Additionally, the related hardware industry has also achieved rapid growth, demonstrating that China’s AI development is no longer a singular ‘software boom’ but has formed a positive cycle from foundational computing power and hardware infrastructure to upstream application ecosystems,” said Wang Guoqing, Vice Dean of the Sichuan AI Academy and Professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology.

Not only is there growth domestically. In February, data from the world’s largest AI aggregation platform indicated that China’s AI large models surpassed the United States for the first time with a token usage of 4.12 trillion. Notably, the platform’s users are primarily overseas developers, with American users accounting for 47.17% and Chinese developers only 6.01%, making the data more reflective of the true global appeal of China’s large models.

“The ’tokens going abroad’ essentially means converting China’s electricity into high-value digital services that can be delivered globally. This not only reflects the development of China’s intelligent industry but also highlights the systematic advantages formed in terms of energy costs, open-source ecology, and industrial chain collaboration,” said Zhu Xufeng, Dean of the School of Public Management at Tsinghua University.

China possesses the world’s strongest industrial chain and manufacturing capacity, having formed a relatively complete AI industrial chain ecosystem from chip manufacturing, smart hardware, algorithm development to various downstream application scenarios and physical products. The country also has a comprehensive infrastructure, with nationwide high-speed mobile communication (5G), cloud computing platforms, and big data centers providing hardware support for AI training and deployment. As the largest producer and consumer of electricity globally, with the highest installed capacity in renewable energy sources like wind and solar, and the longest ultra-high voltage transmission network, China provides ample and inexpensive electricity for the energy-intensive AI computing industry. Additionally, a large pool of undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics, computer science, and engineering offers a strong talent reserve for the AI industry.

Strengthening Source Innovation

Driven by algorithm optimization, computational power enhancement, and data accumulation, AI exhibits strong versatility and penetration. Experts point out that for AI to truly achieve comprehensive empowerment, several challenges remain.

Wang Guoqing analyzed that at the algorithm level, current AI models perform excellently on closed test sets, but face significant challenges in robustness, interpretability, and safety in complex and dynamic “open world” environments. At the data level, while China has a vast amount of data, high-quality, finely annotated multimodal data remains scarce in vertical fields, directly limiting the development of professional-grade AI. At the computational power level, the cost of cloud computing remains high, necessitating breakthroughs in low-power, high-efficiency edge computing for practical applications such as robot control and high-security identity verification.

With support from policies and capital, some enterprises are accelerating their technological layouts in frontier fields to break through computational power bottlenecks. Recently, iFlytek announced a strategic investment in the quantum computing team from Tsinghua University, establishing a joint venture to explore the synergy between AI and quantum technology. The focus will be on algorithm research and technological innovation, promoting the integration of AI with quantum computing and precision measurement.

“AI has become a key area of international competition. There is still a half to a full generation gap between China and the US in terms of top model capabilities, primarily due to computational power and data, as the latter has trained earlier and on a larger scale,” said Liu Qingfeng, Chairman of iFlytek. He believes that in the next decade of AI development, both the scientific and industrial communities must seek new development paths, with quantum computing potentially being one of the answers.

The 14th Five-Year Plan clearly states the need to implement strategic deployments in AI and quantum technology, placing quantum technology at the forefront of future industrial growth. Liu Qingfeng emphasized the importance of not being limited to existing technological iterations but actively planning for the next generation of AI, particularly in disruptive fields like “AI + quantum,” to strengthen source technology innovation and establish a more complete mechanism to encourage original innovation, laying a solid foundation for the next generation of AI development.

A Clearer Blueprint

“China has several inherent conditions and structural advantages in developing the AI industry and should vigorously promote innovation in AI technology, industry, and market applications, enabling AI to empower various sectors,” said Zhu Xufeng.

With proactive policy initiatives, the blueprint for top-level design is becoming increasingly clear. In August 2025, the State Council issued the “Opinions on Deepening the Implementation of the ‘AI+’ Action Plan,” emphasizing not only the AI technology itself but also how AI can empower industrial development. Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and eight other departments jointly issued the “Implementation Opinions on the ‘AI + Manufacturing’ Special Action,” proposing that by 2027, China will achieve secure and reliable supply of key core AI technologies, maintaining a leading position in industrial scale and empowerment levels worldwide.

Li Lecheng, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, stated that they will promote the intelligent upgrade of the entire manufacturing process, deeply embed AI technology into core production processes, and expand application scenarios such as intelligent auxiliary design, virtual simulation, and fault warning, fundamentally transforming innovation paradigms, production methods, and management models. They aim to accelerate the iteration and innovation of smart products and equipment, promote the upgrade of AI smartphones and computers, and accelerate the research and application of new generation intelligent terminals like humanoid robots and brain-computer interfaces, pushing for deep integration of large models with smart connected vehicles and CNC machine tools.

“The ‘AI+’ action can greatly stimulate the innovation vitality of the digital economy and accelerate the development of new productive forces,” Zhu Xufeng noted. In emerging digital economy sectors, the deep integration of AI with frontier technologies like big data, the Internet of Things, and blockchain is giving rise to new business formats. In traditional manufacturing, the introduction of technologies like intelligent robots and machine vision can automate and intelligently control production processes, enhancing the flexibility and competitiveness of industries and pushing manufacturing towards high-end and intelligent development.

Zhu Xufeng suggested that the government should play a leading role, concentrate superior resources, and increase funding for top research teams to lay a solid foundation for AI development. At the same time, it should encourage market and social capital to actively invest in technology development and industrial innovation, forming a diversified investment landscape for the AI industry. By gathering government and business resources, the aim is to promote collaborative industrial development and enhance China’s competitiveness in the global AI landscape.

Wang Guoqing believes that more supportive policies for fundamental research in AI application fields should be introduced, and a smoother platform for the transformation of production, education, research, and application should be established. Focusing on national major needs and market pain points, collaboration between universities and enterprises should be encouraged to shorten the cycle from core technological breakthroughs to the landing of end products, allowing AI to truly exert greater effectiveness in practical scenarios such as hospitals, factories, and schools.