Shoppers browse smart electric chefs at a shop in Changshan, Jiangsu Province. Every day China
Air conditioners that automatically control room humidity and temperature based on artificial intelligence-driven voice interactions and machine learning capabilities to track consumer habits have already become part of China's daily life.
Today, people can play games, exercise, buy online, or video chat with friends and family via intelligent television.
Thanks to the rapid development of AI, more and more home appliances can be controlled through voice commands and facial recognition, allowing users to better understand and satisfy their personalized, diversified demands.
Experts said that rapidly evolving artificial intelligence is expected to create new consumer growth drivers and inject strong driving force into China's home appliance industry as cutting-edge digital technologies are leading a new wave of technological revolution and industrial transformation.
They said that AI is not only increasingly playing an important role in increasing productivity and rebuilding the competitive landscape of the home appliance market, but also driving transformation and upgrades to the traditional manufacturing sector.
The Chinese Cabinet, the State Council, recently issued guidelines for deeper implementation of the “AI Plus” initiative. According to the guidelines, the country will promote the use of AI in science and technology, industrial development, consumption, people's well-being, governance capabilities, and global cooperation.
By 2027, China will broadly and deeply integrate AI into six major sectors, with the penetration rate of new generation intelligent terminals and AI agents exceeding 70%, with the figure exceeding 90% by 2030, the guidelines say.
The country recognizes that AI is essential to fostering new quality productivity and energizing new growth drivers. Large Chinese appliances and appliance manufacturers are racing to incorporate AI technology into their manufacturing, products and services.
AI is redesigning the industrial landscape and will be the biggest technological revolution in the next 50 years, said Zhou Yunjie, chairman and CEO of Higher Group, the leading home appliance manufacturer in China. “Currently, AI deployment in businesses is primarily focused on manufacturing, research and development, sales, procurement and services.”
Emphasizing that all industries will be integrated with AI, and if companies that do not adopt AI will ultimately be weeded, Zhou said that by integrating the AI model with home service robots and terminal devices, it will create a new growth driver for the global home appliance industry.
He said the company has invested heavily in developing large-scale language models, and is promoting the adoption of AI in a wide range of areas, including home appliances and the industrial internet.
The AI model tailored to the smart home domain represents the key infrastructure that supports transformation in the traditional home appliance sector, he added.
“The application of AI in the high-tech manufacturing sector will bring greater value than its use in terminal products, as this cutting-edge digital technology will significantly improve the production efficiency and competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing,” said Li Dongsheng, founder and chairman of Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer TCL Technology Group Corp.
Li said that AI is increasingly embedded in intelligent production lines, product research and development, and terminal devices, which further strengthens the development of China's high-tech manufacturing sector.
“We established the AI Research and Development Centre in Poland in 2018. Prior to that, we established the R&D Centre in the US in 2011. As a manufacturing company, we will focus more on AI application,” Li said.
He said that China's breakthrough in LLMS, along with the rise of meteors at Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, could quickly catch up with the US in the AI segment.
This year's government work report states that under the “AI Plus” initiative, the country will effectively combine digital technologies with their manufacturing and market strengths, supporting a wide range of applications in large-scale AI models, and actively developing a new generation of intelligent terminals and smart manufacturing equipment.
According to a report by China's Merchant Securities, the market measure for China's smart home devices sector reached 95.23 billion yuan ($133.9 billion) in 2025, with AI technology penetration rates exceeding 50%. Over the next decade, smart appliances will experience explosive growth.
“We are pushing the integration of AI data and data, speeding up the industrial applications of AI,” said Liu Jiang, chairman of Sichuan Changhong Electronics Holding Group Co Ltd.
The company uses AI to inspect equipment quality and component quality, facilitating equipment automation and intelligent upgrades, increasing production lines' efficiency.
Changhong applies AI technology to areas such as manufacturing, operations, and products. We announced plans to establish 66 AI-powered intelligent factories around the world, and have deployed AI televisions with LLMS that support multimodal interaction functions such as voice, gestures, and expression.
Hisense Group's large-scale language model is deeply integrated with Deepseek, enhancing deep thinking and reasoning capabilities, allowing smart TVs to better understand the user's demands and provide a more natural interaction experience.
Statistics from the Beijing-based consulting firm show sales of residential appliances in China reached 907.1 billion yuan last year, up 6.4% year-on-year on All View Cloud, focusing on the home appliance sector.
China's AI sector has made significant progress over the next 10-15 years, with the market size reaching 1.73 trillion yuan by 2035, accounting for 30.6% of the global total, said market research firm CCID Consulting.
Gree Electric Appliances, a leading Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer based in Zhuhai in Guangdong, plans to incorporate its own model framework into DeepSeek R1 to build an industry-specific AI model based on DeepSeek.
Gree Chairman Dong Mingzhu said the company hopes that it will enhance image and voice recognition integration, enhance other AI technologies and home appliance products, and that the application of AI in air conditioners will contribute to energy conservation.
“The rise of AI technology will provide better human-machine interaction capabilities, unlocking enormous consumption possibilities while furthering intelligent transformation of the traditional home appliance sector,” said Liu Fei, research director for Consumer Electronics at All View Cloud.
Chinese consumers have shown an increase in demand for high quality smart home equipment, along with iterations and upgrades in product features and technology, adding that the accelerated adoption of AI in household appliances will further stimulate consumer appetites for purchasing, expanding domestic demand and economic support.
However, developing smart home devices has faced several challenges and challenges, Liu said.
AI-powered home appliance products made by various manufacturers cannot normally be connected, and rely on foreign suppliers for high-end smart chips, Liu said.
Hong Yong, an associate researcher at the Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation in China, said that adoption of AI can reduce production costs, improve product quality, optimize resource allocation, and bring about great economic benefits.
He added that new types of consumption are driven primarily by technological advancements in AI, focusing on the diverse, personalized needs of consumers.
MIDEA Group is increasing the application of AI technology in the intelligent manufacturing, smart homes, robots and healthcare segments.
Zhong Zheng, Vice Chairman of MIDEA, called for strengthening R&D investments in AI, particularly in core technologies in key areas, establishing data security and privacy protection systems, and training high-caliber AI talents.
Independent consumer electronics analyst Liang Zhenpeng said that as smart air conditioners accurately adjust the temperature and television in their rooms, they recommended programs according to consumer preferences, and broadcasting programs have been transformed into people's peers.
China's smart home industry is being developed by leaps and boundaries supported by advances in cutting-edge technology represented by AI, adding that home appliances have been creating a more comfortable and smart home environment for residents with the help of AI.
Liang said, “The advent of AI technology will encourage conversational interactions between humans and home appliance products. In addition to the increasing desire of people for high-quality lives, there is a promising future for the AI-enabled smart home sector.”
Zhu Keli, founding director of the China New Economy Institute, underscored the need for home appliance companies in China to improve computing power by establishing a high-performance computing center and increasing the efficiency of computing power utilization by increasing the design of the algorithms.
fanfei@chinadaly.com.cn
The AI-powered air conditioners are on display during the industry exposition held in Shanghai earlier this year. Every day China
