Industrial Research Unit · Straits Institute for Applied AI
Applied AI in China
China's record here is industrial and municipal — 56 self-driving trucks in one coal mine, grassroots service tools in Jiangsu, Beijing and Shanghai — under the State Council's 'AI Plus' target of 70% adoption by 2027.
AI readiness
0.64
Rank 32 of 171 — IMF AI Preparedness Index
Ecosystem
2
of 36 — Stanford AI Index vibrancy ranking
On the record
11
entries across 4 industries
National programme
2025
"AI Plus" initiative
National programme
"AI Plus" initiative
Announced 2025. Its pillars are science and technology, industry, consumption, public wellbeing, governance, global cooperation.
Services 57.7% · Industry 35.6% · Agriculture 6.7% of gross value added — World Bank, 2025
Kind
Role
11 entries
Government & Public Sector
4
Local governments in Jiangsu, Beijing and Shanghai have rolled out grassroots AI service tools, and the Ministry of Public Security runs a national anti-fraud app.
RegulationGovernment & Public SectorChina7 Sep 2026
China's top court bars AI face and voice clones without consent
Supreme People's Court — The Supreme People's Court issued judicial guidelines for AI-related disputes, holding that recognisable digital replicas of a person — cloned faces and cloned voices included — may not be made or distributed without that person's consent. The guidance also reaches algorithmic price discrimination and AI-generated false information, and leaves service providers liable where they fail to act promptly after notice that their systems produced infringing content. Someone whose face has been altered and used to spread false and defamatory sexual claims now has a route to court; the court's vice-president, Tao Kaiyuan, cast this China AI regulation as seeking to balance development and security, with room left to clarify questions on which consensus is still thin.
DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorChina6 Sep 2026
China's public security ministry launches a national anti-fraud AI app
Ministry of Public Security — China's Ministry of Public Security has launched national anti-fraud AI, an AI anti-fraud app helping the public spot telecom and online scams, built independently by the Shanghai Public Security Bureau under its criminal investigation bureau. Users describe a suspicious situation and the app rates the risk, names the probable fraud tactic, gives prevention advice and points to similar cases, using AI agent technologies, multimodal models and large language models.
DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorChina25 Aug 2026
Chinese local governments roll out grassroots AI service tools
Local governments (Jiangsu, Beijing, Shanghai) — Local governments across China have deployed grassroots AI tools: in Suqian, Jiangsu, community-group AI assistants answer social security and school enrolment questions and route feedback. In Beijing's Miyun district an official used AI-assisted coding to build a flood-control monitoring app, and a Shanghai subdistrict launched a community-service agent with voice Q&A and public-service maps. No adoption figures were given.
DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorChina20 Aug 2026
Shanghai puts 100 AI tourist terminals across the city
Shanghai Municipality — Shanghai switched on 100 AI-powered tourist service terminals across the city, each fronted by an AI agent named Hu Xiaoyou that handles navigation, real-time translation, attraction recommendations, ticket booking and made-to-order itineraries. The AI tourist service terminals draw on more than 84,000 entries covering cultural activities, attractions and sports events, carry 14,000 booking and shopping links, work in ten languages — Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Spanish, Thai, Russian and Arabic — and take payment in more than 120 currencies. Machines stand in major hotels, tourism information centres, event venues, business districts and scenic spots, and volunteers will also be stationed with the AI visitor assistant to help visitors with additional needs.
CHN Energy runs 56 self-driving trucks at a coal mine, and offline AI monitors remote coalbed methane drilling in Shanxi.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesChina11 Sep 2026
China releases AI systems for mineral prospecting and geological mapping
Ministry of Natural Resources — The Ministry of Natural Resources released two AI mineral exploration and mapping systems, AI-OreSeeking and AI-GeoMapping, at the 28th China Mining Conference and Exhibition in Tianjin. AI-OreSeeking automates the prospecting workflow end to end and has been trialled in more than 100 projects across over ten provincial-level regions; test data from it indicate that mineral prediction and evaluation once taking half a year can now be finished in one week. AI-GeoMapping runs from preliminary research to map compilation, identifies geological bodies with accuracy above 90 per cent and lifts processing efficiency by more than 50 per cent against traditional methods, and has been tested across nearly 100 map sheets at 1:50,000 in Qinghai, Xizang, Xinjiang and Fujian among other regions; the AI geological mapping system is also being promoted and applied in countries such as Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Laos.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesChina2 Sep 2026
Offline AI monitors remote coalbed methane drilling sites in Shanxi
Shandong Coalfield Geological Bureau — The Third Exploration Team of the Shandong Coalfield Geologic Bureau and partners deployed edge AI safety monitoring at four remote coalbed methane drilling projects in the Qinshui Basin, in Shanxi. It analyses video and behaviour data on site instead of the cloud, with real-time voice alerts where connectivity is weak. The team cites emergency response cut from hours to minutes, 80% better hazard-inspection efficiency and about 25 drilling hours saved on one project; none is independently evaluated.
DeploymentManufacturing, Energy & ResourcesChina13 Aug 2026
CHN Energy runs 56 self-driving trucks at a Chinese coal mine
CHN Energy — CHN Energy runs 56 autonomous mining trucks among about 500 manned vehicles in shared traffic at the company's open-pit coal mine in China's north-west, coordinated by CiDi's MetaMine system. CiDi says its self-driving haulage system MetaMine had reached nearly 40 mines worldwide by mid-2026.
The financial regulator has classed credit-approval AI as high risk for banks, against a tracking report finding 53.5% of Chinese banks now use large models.
RegulationFinance & InsuranceChina24 Jun 2026
China classes credit approval AI as high risk for banks
National Financial Regulatory Administration — China's National Financial Regulatory Administration issued guiding opinions on 18 June 2026 on AI regulation in banking and insurance, with four principles including that users of an AI system are responsible for it. Institutions must grade AI uses by risk and route high-risk ones through approval; anything touching risk management, underwriting and claims, credit approval, asset valuation, fund transactions or generative AI directly shaping whether a financial contract is agreed counts as high-risk AI. Those need risk-committee sign-off, human oversight at critical points and reporting to the regulator.
Evidence of adoptionFinance & InsuranceChina17 Apr 2026
More than half of Chinese banks have adopted large models
Shaqiu Think Tank — Shaqiu Think Tank's tracking report finds 53.5% of Chinese banks, more than half, now using large models in banking, with the sector shifting from tool-level uses to system-level rebuilding of processes. The report does not give its survey base.
Insilico's Rentosertib is the first fully AI-designed drug to reach Phase III.
DeploymentHealthcare & Life SciencesChina6 Sep 2026
AI ultrasound robot guides a congenital heart closure at 301 Hospital
Chinese PLA General Hospital (301 Hospital) — The Senior Department of Cardiology at the Sixth Medical Center of Chinese PLA General Hospital, better known as 301 Hospital, completed a transcatheter closure for congenital heart disease on a 48-year-old man with an AI-powered ultrasound robot at the probe. The robot carried out image acquisition, lesion localisation and real-time navigation on its own through the procedure, and the team leaned on it to choose the occluder and place it accurately. The hospital calls this a first for AI in interventional cardiology, resting that on a search it attributes to an authoritative institution.
Insilico's Rentosertib becomes first fully AI-designed drug in Phase III
Insilico Medicine's Rentosertib, the first AI-designed drug (target and molecule from generative AI) to report a Phase 2a trial, in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (Nature Medicine, June 2025), entered Phase III in July 2026. The randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled pivotal trial enrols 320 patients over 52 weeks (NCT07687459), a registrational first for a fully AI-originated drug.
Every entry on this page is a named organisation putting AI to work in a real job, taken from the State of Applied AI record. Each one is traced to the report it came from and dated, and where a figure is the organisation’s own the entry says so rather than presenting it as an independent result. Readiness, ecosystem and policy figures, where shown, are attributed on the card to the body that published them.
The record is maintained continuously by the Industrial Research Unit of the Straits Institute for Applied AI: entries are added as they are found and verified, not on a schedule, and nothing is published without an open source behind it. It currently holds 1114 entries across 249 countries.
China7 Sep 2026
Singapore
South Korea
Japan
Azerbaijan
India
Australia
Malaysia
Pakistan
Hong Kong
Philippines
Cambodia
Kyrgyzstan
Armenia
Cyprus
Thailand
Brunei
Georgia
Macao
Tajikistan
Fiji
Guam
Kazakhstan
Maldives
Papua New Guinea
Taiwan
Uzbekistan