Data has emerged as a pivotal element in China’s competitive landscape for artificial intelligence (AI), according to an industrial report unveiled on Thursday at the closing ceremony of the 2024 China Internet Conference.
In 2023, China’s AI industry experienced significant growth, opening up new opportunities and spaces for development. The report highlights that, as of December 2023, the core industry model reached a valuation of 578.4 billion yuan (approximately $79.7 billion), marking an 18 percent increase from the previous year.
The number of enterprises in the AI sector has also seen steady growth. By March 2024, there were over 29,770 AI enterprises worldwide, with China hosting more than 4,500 of them. This accounts for about one-seventh of the global total, underscoring China’s rising prominence in the AI industry.
China’s capacity for AI scientific research and innovation continues to enhance, with the country ranking second globally in the number of papers published in the AI field last year. From 2013 to September 2023, the cumulative number of AI patent applications worldwide exceeded 1.29 million, with China contributing 64 percent of these applications, according to the report.
Since 2023, China’s network infrastructure has become increasingly robust. Key frontier technologies have been innovated and developed, digitalization in critical areas has steadily improved, and the construction of a comprehensive network governance framework has accelerated. The cybersecurity industry has also shown high-quality development.
Significant strides have been made in building new information infrastructure, including 5G and gigabit optical fiber networks. The users and traffic scale of IPv6 have increased significantly, satellite internet construction has advanced steadily, and fiber broadband network service capabilities continue to strengthen.
The report also notes that China’s construction of computing infrastructure has reached world-leading levels, with the scale of the cloud computing market growing rapidly.
Reference(s):
Data becomes the commanding height of AI competition in China: report
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