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In a stretch of former farmland now transformed into a gleaming technology park, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, watched two robotic hands slowly thread a needle.
What he was seeing, he declared, would help China seize its future.
It is a future in which artificial intelligence permeates China’s factories, hospitals and classrooms, reinvigorating the economy through advanced robotics and high-end manufacturing. It is a future in which China, not the United States, dominates A.I. development, turning the technology into what Mr. Xi has called a “lead goose” to fly the country into its next economic revolution.
To realize that vision, the Chinese government is mobilizing the full weight of the state.
At the park that Mr. Xi visited, on the outskirts of Beijing in February, hundreds of companies have set up offices to develop cutting-edge chips and A.I. models. The city government is giving them tens of millions of dollars in free computing power. An exhibition hall shows off their creations, including chips designed to power nuclear missiles and brain implants that could help paralyzed patients speak.
Mr. Xi, during his visit, said that China’s strength lies in its ability to zero in on a direction and follow through.
“We must give full play to our nation’s advantage of concentrating resources to accomplish major tasks,” he told an assembled group of entrepreneurs, researchers and officials.
China’s A.I. campaign is backed by enormous sums of government money. Economists estimate that state-led funds put more than $184 billion into A.I. firms between 2000 and 2023, and last year, the government and state-owned banks pledged hundreds of billions more. Private A.I. investment in China is far lower than in the United States, where private sources poured $285 billion into the technology in 2025 alone.
Beijing’s approach to A.I. is distinct from the prevailing one in the United States in other ways, too.
Many in Washington and Silicon Valley see A.I. development as a race toward artificial general intelligence, a still-theoretical form of A.I. that could think and learn as well as — or better than — humans.
Chinese officials have hardly mentioned A.G.I., focusing on more immediate goals.
China’s population is rapidly shrinking and getting older, creating an urgent need for intelligent robots to replace retiring workers. Poor rural residents could seek medical care from digital avatars of top urban doctors. The authorities could more easily know where Chinese citizens are, what they say, and perhaps even how they feel.
The government has said that A.I.-powered tools and agents should permeate 90 percent of Chinese society by 2030, though it has not explained how that would be measured.
Mr. Xi has also endorsed Chinese companies’ use of open-source models, which have helped them win users globally when leading American companies have released closed systems.
China has embraced A.I. despite the potential risks it poses to the Communist Party’s legitimacy and tight grip on society.
The technology is already displacing taxi drivers, actors and office workers, heightening worries about joblessness and potential unrest.
Chatbots could threaten the party’s controls on information, while advanced foreign models like Claude Mythos could make it easier for China’s enemies to launch complex hacking attacks on its critical infrastructure — a threat the country’s top spy chief recently acknowledged.
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Karolis Strautniekas
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