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China’s Artificial Intelligence Dominance

china's artificial intelligence

China’s Artificial Intelligence Strategy Across Multiple Industries

China’s Artificial Intelligence squad has a plan of action in store for the next 10 years to get to its 11th year of AI success all over the world. The other country lined up after China is the United States because of its thriving start-up landscape while Japan stands at the third place.

Google Search validates our search of a leader for Artificial Intelligence, while we tell you the steps China has been taking towards rising as the Godfather of AI.

china's artificial intelligence

1. China Devised An Artificial Intelligence Development Plan

In 2017, China published its “Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan”, which laid out plans to ultimately become the world leader in artificial intelligence, with a domestic AI industry worth almost US$150 billion. The first step of that plan is to catch up with the US on AI technology and applications by 2020.

2. AI Funding

China also dominates AI funding. In 2017, 48 percent of total equity funding of AI start-ups globally came from China, compared to 38 per cent funded by the US, and 13 per cent by the rest of the world. This is a significant jump from the 11.3 per cent of global funding China made in 2016. In the early 2000s, China began to build a high-speed rail network that the government said would spur technological development and improve the country’s transportation system. This train network is now one of the most advanced in the world. There are good reasons to believe the country can make its vision of AI supremacy real.

3. Chinese AI players

85% of Chinese companies are active players in the field of AI, leading all seven nations in the study. They are already moving to adopt AI into some existing processes or currently running pilot initiatives, and their efforts thus far have generally been successful. China’s dominance can be attributed to their New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan introduced in 2017, which is delivering strong results. Which brings us to our next question, what is China’s AI plan?

4. China’s AI Strategy

China has a three-step plan: firstly, it must be able to keep pace with all leading AI technology, and its application in general, by 2020. Part two is to make major breakthroughs by 2025, which is intended to lead to the third part of the plan – the establishment of China as the world leader in the AI field by 2030.

china's artificial intelligence

Source: South China Morning Post

As per our previous blog, China has successfully AIded grocery stores with automated purchase and termed it as their ‘new retail’ strategy. Alibaba introduced Hema and JD introduced 7Fresh. Online retail has flourished in China, but it still accounts for less than 20 percent of the nation’s overall consumption, according to the Ministry of Commerce. The goal of internet players is not to steal business from the offline counterparts, but to digitize old-fashioned merchants and China’s AI plan is to fill in this gap.

5. China’s AI Rush

Success with AI has a lot more to do with the technical infrastructure, skills, expertise, available skills, execution speed and responsiveness and support from senior management in individual companies. The Chinese AI industry has grown 67 per cent over the past year and produced more patents and research papers than the US. This is despite having access to about a fifth of America’s talent pool. China also has an edge over the US on applying AI technology to specific areas such as unmanned retail and medical diagnosis.

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