China continues to expand AI education nationwide. In May 2025, the Ministry of Education released two landmark guidelines introducing AI literacy and generative AI education for primary and secondary schools. More recently, on June 29, the Ministry of Education said that China's State Council has issued the outline plan for the development of the education sector during the 15th Five Year Plan period (2026-2030), calling for AI education across every stage of schooling and greater efforts to strengthen students' AI literacy. The country's growing emphasis on AI education has also attracted international attention. In late May, Newsweek published an article titled “China's Kids Are Getting an Edge With AI," noting that AI is playing an increasingly significant role in Chinese education, with a heavy push from a government that is keen not only to get children to use AI to improve their performance, but also to master the technology behind it.
An industry expert told the Global Times that the steady investment in AI education is beginning to produce visible results, with more students applying AI as a means of solving practical problems. At the same time, educators stressed that technological capability must be guided by correct values. At an AI-themed forum in Beijing this June, seven primary and secondary school students from across China presented an AI-powered solutions designed to tackle real-world challenges. Examples included: How can someone with a broken arm still enjoy racing games? How can visually impaired women “see” their makeup? How can pollutants in rivers be remotely monitored and analyzed in real time? These were functioning AI projects created by children whose average age was under 15 – members of what many now call China's “first generation of AI natives.” Among the youngest presenters was Jin Yihong, a primary school student from Shanghai and an avid video game enthusiast. He began his presentation with a photograph showing his right arm in a cast after a fracture. Jin decided to build an accessible racing game for people with rare diseases, visual impairments and limited mobility. The project evolved steadily, from a simple 2D obstacle-avoidance game to an early version controlled by foot movements, before eventually becoming a fully immersive 3D racing game. “I still can't type very well,” Jin said with a smile. “But with voice input, I can still create all of this using AI.”
His comments unintentionally captured one of AI's most transformative impacts: lowering the barriers to creativity and enabling children to turn ideas into reality long before mastering traditional technical skills. A similar desire to solve real-world problems motivated You Xiaopeng, a sixth-grade student from Hunan province. His team developed an AI-powered real-time makeup assistant designed specifically for visually impaired women. “The idea came from one of our female teammates, who noticed the challenges visually impaired people face,” You explained. “Research identified three major obstacles: they cannot observe makeup demonstrations, cannot evaluate the final results themselves, and often struggle with inaccessible tools and environments. So instead of creating an AI that simply tells users how they look, we wanted one that teaches them how to apply makeup.”
Another primary school student from Beijing presented an AI-powered robotic system for river monitoring. Equipped with an AI agent, the robot can patrol waterways remotely, monitor water quality, collect environmental data in real time, and automatically analyze the information, making environmental monitoring both smarter and more efficient. The forum also featured a youth AI innovation exhibition showcasing more than a dozen student projects, including smart pet collars, AI-enabled home automation systems, intelligent shared bicycle dispatching solutions and AI-assisted rehabilitation devices.
The students who took center stage at the forum are not isolated prodigies. Behind their projects lies a rapidly expanding, nationwide effort to introduce AI literacy into China's basic education system, with the goal of making AI education accessible not only to exceptional students but to every child, the Global Times reports.
