As the latest tech frontier, the fast development of artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to play a pivotal role in driving China’s industrial upgrade, experts and business leaders said. Continuous technological advancements and increased application across a wide range of fields are also expected to give fresh impetus to the country’s high-quality economic growth. Multimodal AI-powered large language models (LLMs), which can process and generate content, including text, images, audio and video, will lead further development of the AI industry, and bolster the revolution in industries such as computing power, servers and chips, they added. Meanwhile, Chinese tech companies’ investment in state-of-the-art AI technology, which all major economies are scrambling to establish a beachhead in, is experiencing a robust upward trend, with sustained growth projected in the coming years. To gain a competitive edge in the global AI chatbot race, industry insiders said Chinese enterprises should put more resources into improving computing power and algorithms, accumulate more high-quality training data, and ramp up investment in basic scientific research.
AI is forecast to contribute USD19.9 trillion to the global economy through 2030, and drive 3.5% of global GDP in 2030, according to a report by global market research company International Data Corp (IDC). In 2024, AI entered a phase of accelerated development and deployment, defined by widespread integration that has led to a surge in investments aimed at significantly optimizing operational costs and timelines, the report said. By automating routine tasks and unlocking new efficiencies, AI will have profound economic consequences by reshaping industries, creating new markets, and altering the competitive landscape, it noted.
China’s spending on AI will likely hit USD38 billion in 2027, and account for about 9% of the global market, with a compound annual growth rate of about 25% from 2023 to 2027, the consultancy estimated. Zhong Zhenshan, Vice President of IDC China, said LLMs have a profound impact on China’s technology sector. They not only spearhead scientific and technological innovation, but also promote industrial transformation and upgrading as well as development of the digital economy, Zhong said. With the emergence of AI agent technology, the influence of LLMs will be further expanded, especially in the digital transformation of enterprises, improvement of the intelligence level of business processes, and work efficiency, he added. AI agents are software programs designed to intelligently interact with their environment to achieve specific goals. They can learn and enhance performance through feedback by utilizing advanced algorithms and sensory inputs to execute tasks and engage with their environments.
China has made significant strides in developing AI technology. It is now home to more than one-third of the world’s LLMs, according to a white paper by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. The number of LLMs worldwide has reached 1,328, with 36% from China, the second-largest after the United States, which accounts for 44% of the total. Major Chinese tech heavyweights – including Alibaba Group, Baidu, Tencent Holdings, and iFlytek – have stepped up efforts to roll out their own AI-powered LLMs and bolster the commercial application of generative AI technology.
Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing unit of Alibaba, in September unveiled the latest version of its open-source Qwen 2.5 model, which boasts enhanced capabilities in math and coding. This version is able to support over 29 languages, while catering to a wide array of AI applications across various sectors including automobile, gaming, and scientific research. Wu Yongming, CEO of Alibaba Group, said LLM technologies have made rapid progress and currently can handle multimodal tasks including text, speech and vision. They can also understand requirements of humans and finish complex programming tasks. At present, more than 300,000 enterprises have access to Alibaba’s LLMs, with a broad range of applications in fields such as code programming, drug research and development, space exploration, and manufacturing. The company has also announced an upgrade to its proprietary flagship model Qwen-Max, which has demonstrated strong performance in areas such as language comprehension, reasoning, math, and coding. Qwen-Max’s capabilities are on par with those of OpenAI’s most advanced GPT-4o model that was launched in May and caused a global sensation, the company said.
Baidu’s AI-powered LLM Ernie Bot has garnered over 430 million users since its debut in March 2023. It handled about 1.5 billion daily API calls by early November, a 30-fold increase from the 50 million announced a year ago. In June, the company unveiled the latest version of its LLM called Ernie 4.0 Turbo. The steep increase reflects the rapid growth in generative AI applications in China over the past two years, said Robin Li, Chairman and CEO of Baidu. AI agents will serve as the predominant form of AI applications and are approaching a tipping point of explosive growth, he said. “The most significant change we’re seeing over the past 18 to 20 months is the accuracy of answers from the large language models,” Li said. In AI, the biggest difference between China and some Western countries lies in applications, which are driving the rapid development of the industry in China, Li added. The company’s focus is on reconstructing services with generative AI, from search and document creation to digital avatars for live-streaming shopping, he said. Currently, 18% of Baidu’s search results are generated by Ernie Bot.
In October, iFlytek unveiled its latest LLM SparkDesk 4.0 Turbo, which outperforms GPT-4o in mathematical and coding capabilities, and achieved breakthroughs in various fields, such as multimodal understanding, text and graphic recognition, and multiple language abilities. Lu Yanxia, Research Director at IDC China, said that open-source LLMs will substantially help enterprises and developers accelerate AI innovation. To accelerate the commercial use and popularization of AI technology, Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, have slashed prices of their major LLM products. Last year, they also provided some versions free of charge to enterprise users, the China Daily reports.
