China is elevating the “one-person company” from a fringe business model to a national strategy, betting that artificial intelligence (AI) can turn individuals into scalable economic units, which industry experts said is a shift unfolding in parallel with the United States, but along a markedly different path. The one-person company (OPC) emerged as one of China’s hottest entrepreneurial trends recently. A research report by the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) describes the sector as “entering a phase of rapid expansion”, concentrated in major economic clusters such as the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regions, as well as rising inland innovation hubs.
The numbers underscore the momentum. By June 2025, China had more than 16 million registered one-person limited liability companies, accounting for 27.4% of all enterprises. In the first half of 2025 alone, 2.86 million new OPCs were registered, up 47% year-on-year and representing nearly a quarter of all new businesses. Unlike in the U.S., where solo entrepreneurship is often tied to gig work or digital services, China’s OPC boom is being hardwired into industrial policy and anchored in the country’s vast manufacturing ecosystem. A single entrepreneur operating behind a laptop can tap into dense supply chains spanning cities like Yiwu, Zhejiang province; Dongguan, Guangdong province and Suzhou, Jiangsu province, effectively leveraging an industrial network at national scale. That “individual plus supply chain” model is emerging as a defining feature of China’s approach and one with few direct parallels in Western economies, industry experts said.
Shenzhen in Guangdong rolled out an action plan in January to position itself as a global hub for AI-driven OPCs. The province in March issued China’s first provincial-level policy framework dedicated to AI-enabled solo entrepreneurship. In April, Sichuan province unveiled its own plan, outlining 16 priority tasks across five key areas to build a regional OPC innovation ecosystem. The policy shift signals a broader recalibration. Rather than simply encouraging entrepreneurship, local governments are moving to construct full-stack support systems combining funding, data access, computing power and application scenarios. The aim is to create what officials describe as a five-dimensional ecosystem spanning policy, capital, talent, infrastructure and real-world use cases. Dedicated OPC startup communities are taking shape, including a cluster in Shanghai’s Lingang Special Area that had attracted more than 500 entrepreneurs by early 2026. Guangdong has introduced specialized recruitment tracks for “super individuals”, while Sichuan plans to establish AI-focused OPC hubs by 2027.
Wang Jian, Academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), frames the trend as a “miniaturization” of small and medium-sized enterprises. “AI is creating significant opportunities for startups,” Wang said, as reported by the China Daily.
