In July 2017, China’s State Council issued the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, distributed as State Council notice Guo Fa [2017] No. 35. The document was dated 8 July 2017 and published on the State Council’s official website on 20 July 2017. It set out a national strategy to make artificial intelligence a central driver of China’s economic and technological development.
The plan is organized around a three-step set of goals. By 2020, it aimed for AI technology and applications to reach internationally advanced levels and for AI to become a significant driver of economic growth, with the core AI industry exceeding 150 billion yuan and related industries surpassing 1 trillion yuan. By 2025, it set targets for major breakthroughs in foundational AI theory, for AI to become a primary force in industrial upgrading and economic transformation, with the core industry exceeding 400 billion yuan and related industries surpassing 5 trillion yuan.
The plan’s headline objective is its 2030 target: for China’s AI theory, technology, and applications to reach world-leading levels, for the country to become a major global center of AI innovation, with the core AI industry exceeding 1 trillion yuan and related industries surpassing 10 trillion yuan. The document frames AI development as connected to economic modernization, social governance, and national defense, and calls for the establishment of supporting legal frameworks and ethical guidelines.
The Chinese-language notice on gov.cn is the primary source for this entry. An institutional English translation published by Stanford’s DigiChina project is cited as supporting material for readers who do not read Chinese.