A humanoid robot, wearing a safety helmet, gets fine-tuned in Shanghai on Thursday, ahead of the 2026 World AI Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance. GAO ERQIANG/CHINA DAILY
China’s booming artificial intelligence sector is entering a new phase as investors, multinational companies and policymakers shift their focus toward putting AI to work in the world’s second-largest economy and exporting that capability overseas.
The shift is drawing increasing attention ahead of the 2026 World AI Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance, which opens in Shanghai on Friday. China has positioned itself not only as one of the fastest-growing AI markets, but also as a major contributor to the technology’s global adoption through industrial applications and open-source models, industry experts said.
In a sign of changing investor sentiment, Goldman Sachs advised investors to rotate from South Korean AI stocks to China’s AI value chain, saying that China has become “one of the most compelling AI growth stories” in global technology.
The attention reflects a broader change underway in China’s AI ecosystem. While the past two years were dominated by foundation models and computing power, companies are now increasingly competing on whether AI can deliver measurable productivity gains in the real economy.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and market consultancies, the value of China’s core AI industry exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan ($177 billion) in 2025, with more than 6,200 AI enterprises. Shipments of AI smartphones and AI personal computers topped 100 million units in 2025, while sales of AI-enabled devices are expected to surpass conventional products for the first time in 2026. China also expects humanoid robot production to exceed 100,000 units this year.
Robin Li Yanhong, founder and CEO of Baidu Inc, told China Daily that “AI is moving from model development to industrial deployment and from technological exploration to what we call an intelligent economy in China”.
“The value of AI should not be measured simply by how much computing power or how many tokens are consumed,” Li said. “It should be measured by how much value it creates for the real economy and for society.”
Li proposed a more meaningful benchmark — daily active agents, or the number of AI agents used each day — rather than computing power alone.
He cited the case of Qingdao Port, whose AI agent system increased container loading efficiency by more than 10 percent, lifting throughput from roughly 3,500 containers per minute to about 4,300, despite the port already being regarded as one of the world’s most automated.
Shen Jun, vice-president of Unilever’s China R&D Center, said that for multinationals, China’s rapid progress in AI is creating unprecedented innovation opportunities.
“With its strong scientific research capabilities, deep talent pool, well-developed industrial ecosystem and vibrant AI startup community, China provides an ideal environment for emerging technologies to be rapidly validated, scaled and applied,” Shen said.
Unilever has embedded AI throughout its research pipeline in China, from molecular discovery and ingredient screening to packaging design and engineering simulation, while using its global R&D network to bring Chinese AI-driven innovations to international markets.
Gaurav Modi, managing partner of EY ASEAN and Singapore Consulting, said that China’s most significant international influence on AI is economic.
“Its open-weight models have dramatically lowered the global cost of entry to frontier-class capability. That accessibility matters, because the returns are now proven,” he said.
EY’s latest survey found that 96 percent of organizations investing in AI reported productivity gains, with 57 percent of them achieving significant gains.
“From Southeast Asia’s vantage point, affordable AI is what turns those gains from a privilege of the largest economies into a possibility for all of them,” he said.
Xue Lan, dean of Tsinghua University’s Schwarzman College, said: “Many countries are adopting Chinese open-source foundation models as the technological foundation of their own AI industries. China’s open-source models have made a significant contribution to the global diffusion of AI technology.”
Noting that open-source development may not generate immediate commercial returns, Xue said that it does create long-term opportunities through cloud services, infrastructure and AI-enabled applications.
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