🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

This AI push is a formal national strategy with long-term milestones

• Xi has backed a national policy plan called the “AI Plus” initiative. It seeks wider use of AI across the economy, society and governance 1.
• The strategy sets numeric goals. It targets more than 70% penetration of new-generation intelligent terminals, agents and other applications by 2027, then over 90% by 2030 2.
• Officials tie the plan to demographic contraction. They cast AI as a tool to raise efficiency and total factor productivity (a measure of how efficiently an economy turns labor and capital into output) 3.
• A state-linked publication put China’s AI industry above RMB 900 billion in 2024. It also said China holds about 60% of the world’s AI-related patents 4.

China’s domestic AI plan has global ambitions

• The AI Plus directive leans on AI-driven consumer tech to lift demand. Trivium China (a China-focused political and economic policy research firm) writes that these areas may draw foreign investment 3.
• The plan calls AI an “international public good.” It also proposes programs to help Global South countries build AI capacity, which could shape global governance standards 2.
• It supports open-source communities that can produce projects with global reach. Trivium China says Beijing views open-sourcing as a way to speed adoption abroad and sharpen the competitiveness of Chinese technologies 3.
• The document links AI to China’s effort to sway international AI governance frameworks and cooperation approaches 2.