Nine Chinese departments, led by the Ministry of Commerce and including the Cyberspace Administration, the National Development and Reform Commission, the education, science, industry, culture and tourism ministries, the People’s Bank of China and the market regulator, jointly published opinions on accelerating technology-driven commerce on October 19. Commerce ministry assistant minister Yuan Xiaoming told a State Council Information Office briefing the same day that it is the first comprehensive, systematic document issued under the technology energising commerce theme, intended to make technological innovation the driver running through the whole trade and consumption chain.
The document works in four directions: using technology to upgrade goods consumption, including an AI plus manufacturing programme to deepen AI in product research, design, manufacture and marketing and to expand supply of smart phones, computers, home products, wearables and robots; expanding services consumption, from housekeeping platforms and catering digitisation to AI in health management and rehabilitation; unblocking distribution, through digital supply chains, smart warehouses and unmanned delivery; and building future commercial scenarios, including commercial AI agents and embodied intelligence in retail and logistics. Six support areas cover standards, infrastructure, safety supervision, research commercialisation, talent and fiscal and financial backing.
At the same briefing, the industry ministry put the scale of China’s core AI industry in 2025 at more than 1.2 trillion yuan and set out plans to push AI computers and phones, brain-computer interfaces and embodied intelligent terminals, and smart industrial and agricultural machinery. The opinion is a framework document, not a spending programme, and its force will depend on the implementing measures that follow. Its timing is the signal: it was published three days after the same commerce ministry proposed export controls on solar, AI and biomedicine technologies, pairing domestic diffusion of the technologies with tighter control of their movement abroad.