Xi Jinping's April 2025 push: deploy AI in factories and government

China's AI strategy is framed at the top: the country's leaders describe AI as a "strategic technology driving scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation." That framing dates back at least to April 2025, when President Xi Jinping called for technological self-reliance and application-oriented development. The stated goal is not only to develop domestic AI models but also to improve them through deployment in manufacturing and government administration — a use-it-to-improve-it loop rather than a pure research push.

This sits in the broader U.S.-China competition that now spans semiconductors, energy, communications and manufacturing. It notes that the United States retains advantages in frontier models, advanced semiconductors, private capital, cloud infrastructure and developer ecosystems, and that capital expenditures by major U.S. technology companies exceeded $400 billion in 2025, compared with $63 billion in China. Those figures are presented as context for the scale gap, not as a verdict on China's deployment-focused path.

The visible shopfront for China's model push was the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, where visitors checked out the Moonshot booth promoting its Kimi K3 AI model in July.