AI giving China edge in business

China's accelerated efforts to boost the application of fast-evolving artificial intelligence in a wide range of sectors will help the country gain a competitive edge in tech frontiers and create immense business opportunities for investors amid external uncertainties, said experts and entrepreneurs.

China, they said, is at the global forefront in the development and application of AI technology, which has become a vital force bolstering its economic development and industrial upgrades, as the country recognizes AI as an essential tool in fostering new quality productive forces and building up new growth drivers.

The country's super-large market, robust engineering talent pool and thriving innovation ecosystem will underpin its capacity to drive technologies from research labs into the industrial arena, they added.

Zhu Min, former deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said China will make great strides in the use of AI technology in the next 18 months to two years, emphasizing that the country's large-scale manufacturing, vast consumer market of 1.4 billion people and abundant industrial application scenarios present unique advantages for the development of AI.

Zhu made the remarks during the 16th Annual Meeting of the New Champions, also known as the Summer Davos, in Tianjin last month. He said AI Plus will serve as an important driving force for China's economic growth.

China has surpassed the United States in the number of academic papers issued on AI, taking the top spot worldwide, Zhu said, adding that such papers increasingly focus on the specific industrial applications of AI.

Noting that Chinese AI startup DeepSeek had opened a broad space for AI deployment, he said China's services sector, technology and AI have huge growth potential, with future employment to take place in these emerging fields. It is highly significant in strengthening retraining in the job market and letting people know how best to use AI, he added.

Goldman Sachs analysts said breakthroughs in generative AI have the potential to bring about sweeping changes to the global economy. These breakthroughs could drive a 7 percent, or about $7 trillion, increase in global GDP and lift productivity growth by 1.5 percentage points over a 10-year period, they said.