Visitors check out Digital China’s products at the company’s booth during the 2025 World AI Conference in Shanghai in July. CHINA DAILY
To strengthen China’s smart economic development and promote modernization, the application of artificial intelligence should be expanded to more core industrial scenarios, academics and business executives say.
The comments came after proposals in this year’s Government Work Report called for greater efforts to “create new forms of smart economy”.
Jiang Qiping, vice director of the academic committee of the China Management Science Society (CMSS), said that promoting the thorough use of AI and “truly integrating AI into core industrial scenarios” will be key to achieving the goal.
No company can solve all business problems overnight by relying on a single AI system. Chinese companies now understand that truth, Jiang said.
Muhammad Hamayun, a Pakistani academic at Malaysia’s Multimedia University, said China’s digital transformation has entered a new AI-driven phase, and there is a growing industry consensus that AI’s true value lies in fundamentally reengineering the fundamental processes of enterprises, rather than just as an “alternative tool”.
Mr. Hamayun said that he was impressed by the Chinese Prime Minister’s remarks on the development of a new form of smart economy and efforts to further advance and expand the “AI Plus” initiative during the presentation of the Government Work Report in the just concluded two sessions.
“China’s efforts to strengthen the smart economy will definitely help the country’s economic and modernization drive,” Hamayun said.
As of the end of 2025, the scale of China’s core AI industry will exceed 1.2 trillion yuan ($174.5 billion), and “AI plus” has evolved from a blueprint to deep industrial application.
Furthermore, according to the National Development and Reform Commission, the value of China’s AI-related industries is expected to reach more than 10 trillion yuan by the end of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30).
Guo Wei, chairman of Digital China, a digital transformation service provider, emphasized the role of AI in driving enterprise operations and improving efficiency.
He said the company, which is listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, has introduced an “AI for Process” mechanism that advocates the systematic integration of AI capabilities across business operations.
By reorganizing data assets, this mechanism will enable efficient collaboration between intelligent agents and human employees, ultimately facilitating a significant increase in companies’ competitiveness, he said.
“This transformation is not just about adding functionality to existing systems, but a systemic innovation in technology architecture, organizational models, and ways of working around business flows, data flows, and knowledge flows,” Guo added.
Li Gan, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Digital China, said, “In the evolution of integration, AI will be upgraded from an auxiliary tool to a core driver of process operations, facilitating enterprises’ transition from traditional information architecture to a new development paradigm centered on intelligence.”
Citing the example of Digital China, CMSS’s Jiang said this deep integration of AI into enterprise operations is key to driving process reengineering and productivity transformation.
“Only by carrying out systematic innovation with ‘process reengineering’ as the main focus of efforts, enterprises will be able to effectively transform technological potential into industrial momentum, which will facilitate the creation of a new form of smart economy in China,” Jiang added.
Digital China’s process-driven AI transformation has brought significant efficiency improvements to Voyah, a high-end smart new energy brand owned by Dongfeng Motor.
Xu Yuance, head of digital large-scale model applications at Voyah, said Digital China’s core philosophy of “AI for Process” is fully aligned with the company’s digital transformation strategy.
“Integrating large-scale model capabilities into multidimensional processes across production, sales, and service, while combining enterprise knowledge governance and automated operations systems, creates value far beyond mere efficiency gains,” said Xu. “Ultimately, this approach helps deliver high-quality end-to-end delivery and enables efficient collaboration across teams and processes.”
hanjingyan@chinadaily.com.cn
