China boasts 4,400 AI firms as sector leads industrial transformation

There are more than 4,400 artificial intelligence (AI) firms in China, with the core industry scale reaching 500 billion yuan ($68.87 billion), as AI has become an important driving force and strategic technology for a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, a report showed on Thursday.

Based on independent innovation, China has established AI technological systems, industry ecosystems and enterprise alliances in aspects including intelligent chips, large language models (LLM), operating systems and deep learning platforms, showed the report, which was released by the Chinese Institute of New Generation AI Development Strategies on the ongoing 2024 World Intelligence Expo in North China's Tianjin Municipality.

"Since 2022, the development of AI in China has entered the stage of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that is led by LLMs, giving a strong boost to the whole economy," Liu Gang, chief economist at the institute, told the Global Times on Thursday.

AI has not only contributed to the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries but also boosted the development of emerging industries. As a result, the technology empowers China's manufacturing and helps improve the economic structure, contributing to the country's economic transition to compact development from an extensive development model previously, Liu said.

The total scale of China's core AI industry reached 578.4 billion as of the end of 2023, up 13.9 percent year-on-year. Cities and provinces including Beijing, South China's Guangdong Province, Shanghai, and East China's Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces showed stronger competitiveness in the sector, according to the report.

China has attached great importance to AI development in recent years to build itself into a major global AI innovation center. Technologies such as facial recognition, voice recognition, intelligent robots, virtual reality and driverless vehicles have been widely used in a variety of application scenarios.

In the realm of autonomous driving, vehicles with AI technology can automatically choose the optimal route, maintain a proper speed and smoothly pass through complex road sections. In the medical sector, AI-enabled surgical robots can help increase the precision and accuracy of operations, which helps reducing post-surgery pain and shortening hospital stays.