🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

The policy ties to U.S. tech tensions, and local plans follow

• Beijing promotes sci-tech insurance, which covers risks in scientific and technological R&D and commercialization. Officials link it to building China’s technological self-reliance “amid growing tensions with the U.S. over advanced technology,” and ask insurers to act as an “economic shock absorber” for innovation 1.
• Local governments have started writing their own versions of the approach.
• Shanghai released guidelines for an insurance system that supports its aim of becoming an international science and technology innovation center 2.
• Shanghai also calls for closer use of artificial intelligence in insurance and backs new models led by core enterprises, meaning large companies that anchor an industry supply chain, within industry chains 2.

China’s insurance giants already have strong tech operations

• Policy makers are building on tools insurers already use.
• Ping An has spent about 1% of revenue and about 10% of profit each year on R&D for nearly ten years. It has also grown a tech ecosystem that incubated affiliates, including unicorns, which are privately held startups valued at $1 billion or more 3.
• Those investments have scaled into everyday work.
• In the first nine months of 2025, AI service representatives handled 80% of Ping An’s customer service volume. Ping An P&C also reported RMB9.15 billion in claims savings from smart fraud detection 4.
• That foundation may help insurers roll out more data-heavy sci-tech insurance products, and it fits work already underway in green finance and EV-related insurance products 5.