Cultivating New Drivers of Economic Development with Artificial Intelligence

The "Proposal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development," adopted at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the CPC, [1]1 The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the CPC was held in July 2025, focusing on further deepening reform and advancing Chinese modernization. The "15th Five-Year Plan" covers the years 2026-2030. points out that it is necessary to accelerate innovation in digital and intelligent technologies such as artificial intelligence, break through basic theories and core technologies, and strengthen the efficient supply of computing power, algorithms, and data. It calls for fully implementing the "AI+" action, leading the transformation of scientific research paradigms with artificial intelligence, strengthening the integration of artificial intelligence with industrial development, cultural development, people's livelihood security, and social governance, seizing the commanding heights of artificial intelligence industrial application, and empowering all industries in an all-round way. The 2025 Central Economic Work Conference [2]2 The Central Economic Work Conference is an annual high-level meeting of the CPC and the State Council that sets the economic policy agenda for the following year. proposed deepening and expanding "AI+" and improving artificial intelligence governance. As a strategic technology currently leading a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, artificial intelligence is not only the core engine of the digital economy but also the strategic cornerstone for cultivating new quality productive forces and promoting high-quality development. Through deep integration with the real economy, artificial intelligence is reshaping productive forces and relations of production at an unprecedented speed. Profoundly understanding the cultivation mechanism of artificial intelligence for economic momentum and promoting the evolution of artificial intelligence development towards high-quality development and social harmony is both an inherent requirement for fully, accurately, and comprehensively implementing the new development philosophy and an inevitable choice for maintaining social fairness and justice and solidly advancing common prosperity.

党的二十届四中全会通过的《中共中央关于制定国民经济和社会发展第十五个五年规划的建议》指出，加快人工智能等数智技术创新，突破基础理论和核心技术，强化算力、算法、数据等高效供给。全面实施“人工智能+”行动，以人工智能引领科研范式变革，加强人工智能同产业发展、文化建设、民生保障、社会治理相结合，抢占人工智能产业应用制高点，全方位赋能千行百业。2025年中央经济工作会议提出，深化拓展“人工智能+”，完善人工智能治理。人工智能作为当前引领新一轮科技革命和产业变革的战略性技术，不仅是数字经济的核心引擎，更是培育新质生产力、推动经济高质量发展的战略基石。通过与实体经济的深度融合，人工智能正在以前所未有的速度重塑生产力与生产关系。深刻理解人工智能对经济动能的培育机理，推动人工智能发展朝着高质量发展与社会和谐的方向演进，既是完整准确全面贯彻新发展理念的内在要求，又是维护社会公平正义、扎实推进共同富裕的必然选择。

1. Deeply Understand the Logic of Artificial Intelligence Transformation

1.深刻认识人工智能变革逻辑

Artificial intelligence is the core engine of new quality productive forces. Artificial intelligence achieves a qualitative leap in productive forces through fundamental changes to the three elements of laborers, means of labor, and objects of labor. In the era of artificial intelligence, laborers are no longer merely suppliers of physical or simple mental labor but become creators and controllers of intelligent systems; means of labor have expanded from traditional machinery and equipment to algorithms, computing power, and models; and objects of labor have expanded from material resources to massive data resources. This transformation causes a nonlinear reorganization of the production function, providing new momentum for economic development beyond the traditional factor input model through explosive growth in total factor productivity. It must be deeply understood that artificial intelligence is not a single technological breakthrough but a general-purpose technology that permeates all sectors of the national economy and is building a completely new modern industrial system centered on intelligent technology.

人工智能是新质生产力的核心引擎。人工智能通过对劳动者、劳动资料、劳动对象三大要素的根本性变革，实现了生产力质的跃迁。在人工智能时代，劳动者不再仅仅是体力或简单脑力的供给者，而是成为智能系统的创造者和驾驭者，劳动资料从传统的机器设备拓展到了算法、算力和模型，劳动对象则从物质资源扩展到了海量的数据资源。这种变革使得生产函数发生了非线性重组，通过全要素生产率爆发式增长，为经济发展提供了超越传统要素投入模式的新动能。必须深刻认识到，人工智能并不是单一的技术突破，而是一种通用目的技术，它渗透到国民经济各行业，正在构建起以智能技术为核心的全新现代化产业体系。

The intelligent economy is an advanced form of the digital economy. From a historical perspective, human economic forms have undergone a leap from agricultural economy and industrial economy to digital economy, and artificial intelligence is driving the digital economy to evolve deeply from informatization to intelligentization. The focus of the informatization stage lies in data collection and connection, while the focus of the intelligentization stage lies in the deep mining of the value of data elements and automated decision-making. This evolution means that the logic of economic operation is shifting from human-machine collaboration to human-machine integration, and the circulation efficiency of social reproduction will be greatly improved. Through deep learning and pattern recognition of complex systems, artificial intelligence can predict market fluctuations, optimize resource allocation, and even autonomously drive research and development, marking that human society is entering a new stage capable of automatically creating knowledge and autonomously improving efficiency. This evolution not only brings about the expansion of the scale of wealth creation but also promotes the optimization of growth models.

智能经济是数字经济演进的高级形态。从历史维度看，人类经济形态经历了农业经济、工业经济到数字经济的跨越，人工智能正在推动数字经济从信息化向智能化深度演进。信息化阶段的重点在于数据的采集与连接，智能化阶段的重点则在于数据要素的价值深度挖掘与自动化决策。这种演进意味着经济运行的逻辑从人机协作向人机融合转变，社会再生产的循环效率将得到极大提升。人工智能通过对复杂系统的深度学习和模式识别，可以预测市场波动、优化资源配置甚至自主驱动研发，标志着人类社会正在进入一个能够自动创造知识、自主提升效率的新阶段。这种演进，既带来了财富创造规模的扩张，也助推了增长方式的优化。

Technological innovation must serve the overall situation of high-quality development. The core purpose of cultivating new economic momentum is to meet the people's ever-growing needs for a better life and to achieve effective qualitative improvement and reasonable quantitative growth in economic development. The development of artificial intelligence cannot deviate from the fundamental goals of social harmony and common prosperity. In the dynamic evolution of factor substitution and structural optimization, although the introduction of artificial intelligence may have a short-term impact on traditional employment structures, in the long run, it can create new demands and open up new tracks, providing society with more creative and higher value-added job positions. On the new journey, it is necessary to adhere to the people-centered development philosophy, combine the efficiency advantages of artificial intelligence with the advantages of the socialist system, and ensure, by building an inclusive governance framework, that the dividends of technological progress are not monopolized by a minority group but are transformed into a realistic driving force for solidly advancing common prosperity and maintaining social fairness and justice.

科技创新必须服从高质量发展大局。培育经济新动能的核心目的，在于满足人民日益增长的美好生活需要，经济发展实现质的有效提升和量的合理增长。人工智能的发展不能脱离社会和谐与共同富裕的根本目标。在要素替代与结构优化的动态演进中，人工智能的引入虽在短期内可能对传统就业结构产生冲击，但从长远看，它能够通过创造新需求、开辟新赛道，为社会提供更具创造性、更高附加值的就业岗位。新征程上，必须坚持以人民为中心的发展思想，将人工智能的效率优势与社会主义制度优势结合起来，通过构建包容性的治理框架，确保技术进步的红利不被少数群体垄断，而是转化为扎实推进共同富裕、维护社会公平正义的现实动力。

2. Fully Release the Potential of Artificial Intelligence Momentum

2.全面释放人工智能动能潜力

Stimulate domestic demand potential with artificial intelligence. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "Expanding domestic demand concerns both economic stability and economic security; it is not an expedient measure but a strategic move." The 2025 Central Economic Work Conference placed "adhering to domestic demand-led development and building a strong domestic market" at the top of the key tasks for 2026. Demand is the source of power for economic growth. Artificial intelligence achieves a substantial expansion of domestic demand scale by creating new consumption scenarios and reducing transaction costs. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first half of 2025, the proportion of online retail sales of physical goods in China accounted for 24.9% of total retail sales of consumer goods. Behind this is the precise capture and real-time matching of users' potential needs by various intelligent recommendation algorithms. In terms of model innovation, artificial intelligence expands the breadth of service consumption through new business forms such as smart travel, online education, and telemedicine, and by reducing information asymmetry in the market, it enables small, medium, and micro enterprises and individual workers to more conveniently connect with market demand.

以人工智能激发内需潜能。习近平总书记强调：“扩大内需既关系经济稳定，也关系经济安全，不是权宜之计，而是战略之举。”2025年中央经济工作会议把“坚持内需主导，建设强大国内市场”摆在2026年经济工作重点任务的首位。需求是经济增长的动力之源，人工智能通过创造新消费场景与降低交易成本，实现了内需规模的实质性扩张。根据国家统计局数据，2025年上半年我国实物商品网上零售额占社会消费品零售总额的比重达24.9%，这背后离不开各种智能推荐算法对用户潜在需求的精准捕捉与即时匹配。在模式创新上，人工智能通过智慧出行、在线教育、远程医疗等新业态拓展了服务消费的广度，并通过降低市场中的信息不对称，使得中小微企业和个体劳动者能更便捷地对接市场需求。

Improve supply quality with intelligent technology. The core of supply-side structural reform lies in improving the quality and efficiency of the supply system, and artificial intelligence achieves a systematic optimization of the supply system through the improvement of total factor productivity. The widespread application of digital, networked, and intelligent tools breaks the strict limitations on production time and space under the traditional industrial model, granting greater flexibility to production organizations. In the list of Lighthouse Factories selected by the World Economic Forum, the intelligent practices of Chinese enterprises have become global benchmarks. [3]3 The Lighthouse Factories are a network of world-leading manufacturing sites selected by the World Economic Forum for their successful adoption of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies. In addition, through the intelligent transformation of production processes, artificial intelligence achieves a shift from experience-driven to data-driven approaches, significantly shortening product research and development cycles. This optimization on the supply side, while accelerating the high-end and knowledge-based transformation of physical products, also promotes the transfer of labor to high-cognition and innovative positions, thereby enhancing the human capital value of the entire supply side.

以智能技术提升供给质量。供给侧结构性改革的核心在于提高供给体系的质量和效率，而人工智能通过全要素生产率的提升，实现了供给体系的系统性优化。数字化、网络化、智能化工具的广泛应用，打破了传统工业模式下对生产时空的严格限制，赋予了生产组织更大的灵活性。在世界经济论坛评选的灯塔工厂名单中，中国企业的智能化实践已成为全球标杆。此外，人工智能通过对生产流程的智能化改造，实现了从经验驱动向数据驱动的转变，大幅缩短了产品研发周期。这种供给端的优化，在加快实物产品高端化、知识化转型的同时，也推动劳动力向高认知、创新型岗位转移，从而提升了整个供给侧的人力资本价值。

Continuously expand growth space with digital technology. To optimize economic increments, we must seize opportunities for the development of future industries, and artificial intelligence is precisely the fertile soil for spawning new industries, new business forms, and new models. According to estimates by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the core industry scale of artificial intelligence in China exceeded 900 billion yuan in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 24%. As of September 2025, the number of artificial intelligence enterprises exceeded 5,300, accounting for 15% of the global total, forming a complete industrial system covering basic infrastructure, model frameworks, and industry applications. Artificial intelligence has led a series of business models such as the platform economy and the sharing economy, creating entirely new occupational categories such as virtual reality engineers, algorithm optimization specialists, and data annotators. These new job positions are large in scale and diverse in type, capable of effectively absorbing labor and serving as a reservoir for employment. By supporting the development of new business forms of "AI+," cultivating emerging occupations such as data annotation and scenario operation and maintenance, and building an incremental growth system underpinned by technological innovation, the process of technological progress is truly transformed into a process of value creation and employment quality and quantity expansion.

以数字技术持续开拓增长空间。做优经济增量，要求我们必须抢抓未来产业发展机遇，而人工智能正是催生新产业、新业态、新模式的肥沃土壤。据中国信息通信研究院测算，2024年我国人工智能核心产业规模已突破9000亿元，同比增长24%。截至2025年9月，人工智能企业数量超5300家，全球占比达到15%，形成覆盖基础底座、模型框架、行业应用的完整产业体系。人工智能引领了平台经济、共享经济等一系列商业模式，创造了如虚拟现实工程师、算法优化师、数据标注员等全新的职业类别。这些新增岗位规模庞大、类型多元，能够有效吸纳劳动力，发挥就业蓄水池的作用。通过支持发展“人工智能+”新业态，培育数据标注、场景运维等新兴职业，构建起以技术创新为底色的增量增长体系，推动技术进步过程真正转化为价值创造与就业提质扩容过程。

Activate stock assets with smart empowerment. The key to revitalizing economic stock lies in using digital technology to empower the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, so that the massive stock assets can be revitalized through intelligent transformation. As a general-purpose technology, artificial intelligence, through the digital embedding of traditional production lines, can effectively achieve the rediscovery of asset value. This revitalization of stock resources is essentially a recombination of traditional means of production using the new production factor of data, continuously promoting the transformation of traditional industries towards high-end and knowledge-based directions, further enhancing the resilience and potential of economic development.

以智慧赋能激活存量资产。盘活经济存量的关键在于利用数字技术赋能传统产业转型升级，使庞大的存量资产在智能化改造中焕发生机。人工智能作为通用目的技术，通过对传统生产线的数字化嵌入，能够有效实现资产价值的重新发现。这种对存量资源的盘活，本质上是利用数据这一新的生产要素对传统生产资料的重新组合，持续推动传统产业向高端化、知识化转型，进一步增强经济发展的韧性与潜力。

3. Systematically Improve the Artificial Intelligence Policy System

3.系统完善人工智能政策体系

Coordinate development and security to promote the steady development of the intelligent economy. Coordinating development and security requires that, within an institutional environment that encourages innovation, we delineate clear red lines and build a resilient security barrier for the release of new drivers. This security encompasses not only technical ethical dimensions such as algorithm transparency and data privacy protection, but also involves national security and systemic risk prevention. We should establish and improve an AI algorithm filing system and a graded and classified regulatory framework, and conduct routine security assessments for issues such as false information and bias discrimination that may arise from large models. In key links such as cross-border data flows and protection of core intellectual property rights, we must strengthen institutional design to prevent security spillover risks caused by technological leadership. Only under the premise of ensuring that technology is trustworthy and risks are controllable can the economic momentum brought by AI be sustainable and steady.

统筹发展和安全，促进智能经济稳健发展。统筹发展与安全，要求我们在鼓励创新的制度环境下，划定清晰的红线，为新动能的释放构建坚韧的安全屏障。这种安全既涵盖算法透明度、数据隐私保护等技术伦理层面，更涉及国家安全与系统性风险防范。应建立健全人工智能算法备案制度与分级分类监管框架，针对大模型可能产生的虚假信息、偏见歧视等问题，开展常态化的安全评估。在数据跨境流动、核心知识产权保护等关键环节，加强制度设计，防止由于技术领先导致的安全溢出风险。只有在确保技术可信、风险可控的前提下，人工智能带来的经济动能才是可持续且稳健的。

Promote effective qualitative improvement and maintain reasonable quantitative growth, achieving deep integration of AI and the real economy. AI must not only achieve technological breakthroughs but also be implemented in the "AI+" action plan and transformed into tangible economic growth performance. It is necessary to push AI from the laboratory to the production line, from general-purpose large models to industry-specific vertical applications. Policy formulation should focus on supporting enterprises in carrying out cross-border integrated innovation, using scenario-driven approaches to facilitate technology implementation. In promoting effective qualitative improvement, attention should be paid to AI's contribution to the collaborative efficiency of the entire industrial chain; in maintaining reasonable quantitative growth, support should be given to the large-scale expansion of the intelligent industry. By establishing industry data spaces and opening up public data resources, the cost of intelligent applications for enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, can be reduced. This coordinated progress in quality and quantity will enable AI to truly become an important force supporting the achievement of China's long-term economic growth goals, ensuring a smooth and orderly transition between old and new drivers.

推动质的有效提升与保持量的合理增长，实现人工智能与实体经济深度融合。人工智能既要实现技术突破，更要落实到“人工智能+”行动计划中，转化为实实在在的经济增长表现。必须推动人工智能从实验室走向生产线，从通用大模型走向行业垂直应用。政策制定应侧重于支持企业开展跨界融合创新，通过场景驱动促使技术落地。在推动质的有效提升方面，应关注人工智能对全产业链协同效率的贡献；在保持量的合理增长方面，应支持智能产业规模化扩张。通过建立行业数据空间、开放公共数据资源，降低企业尤其是中小企业的智能应用成本。这种质与量的协同共进，将使人工智能真正成为支撑我国长期经济增长目标达成的重要力量，确保新旧动能转换平稳有序。

Adhere to technology for good and maintain social harmony and stability. The ultimate goal of technological development is the comprehensive development of people, and we must attach great importance to the impact of AI on employment, distribution, and social psychology. Although AI will replace some low-end repetitive labor, it will also create various new types of employment positions, thereby achieving a structural reshaping of the labor market through dynamic evolution. To this end, efforts should be increased to train workers' digital literacy, build a complete job transfer support system, and ensure that the technological dividend benefits the broad masses of the people. At the same time, we must be vigilant about the excessive concentration of wealth and the widening of the digital divide caused by algorithms, and ensure through fiscal and tax adjustments, inclusive finance, and other means that small and medium-sized enterprises and remote areas can share the opportunities of the intelligent era.

坚持科技向善，保持社会和谐稳定。技术发展的归宿是人的全面发展，必须高度重视人工智能对就业、分配以及社会心理的影响。虽然人工智能会替代部分低端重复性劳动，但也会创造出各种新型就业岗位，从而在动态演进中实现劳动力市场的结构性重塑。为此，应加大对劳动者数字素养的培训力度，构建完善的转岗支持体系，确保技术红利惠及广大人民群众。同时，警惕算法带来的财富过度集中与数字鸿沟扩大问题，通过财税调节、普惠金融等手段，确保中小企业和偏远地区能够共享智能时代的机遇。

(Authors: Li Tao and Xu Xiang are respectively a specially appointed researcher of the Beijing Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and Vice President of Central University of Finance and Economics, and a professor at Central University of Finance and Economics)

（作者：李涛、徐翔，分别系北京市习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想研究中心特约研究员、中央财经大学副校长，中央财经大学教授）