Conceptual diagram of AI Photo: VCG

China aims to establish artificial intelligence (AI) service provider resource pools, and it also aims to lift the number of enterprises in these pools in provinces that host national pilot zones for AI industrial innovation applications to at least 100 by the end of 2027, according to a circular issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) on Monday. At the national level, the target is 3,000.

All regions are required to survey and map the situation of AI service providers within their jurisdictions, including centrally administered state‑owned enterprises registered locally, and to establish service provider archives, said the MIIT. A national service provider resource pool based on relevant standards will be formed in due course.

The special action to cultivate AI application service providers is aimed to implement the country's "AI plus" initiative and the specific tasks of cultivating AI application service providers and building an AI application service chain, according to the MIIT.

The circular proposed encouraging service providers to focus on high‑frequency, essential, and reusable business scenarios, and to package and build modular, standardized solution product bundles, creating a batch of "small‑scale, fast, lightweight and precise" AI product services.

The MIIT's circular, which emphasizes the application aspects of AI, indicates that China's AI development has entered a new phase of implementation, from the previous phase of infrastructure build-out and testing of models, Xiang Ligang, a veteran telecom and tech policy observer, told the Global Times on Monday.

The nurturing of AI service providers will help provide companies in various sectors in China with the AI infrastructure to turbocharge their development, Xiang said.

AI service providers integrate computing power, various models and storage capacity, and they can serve clients that otherwise could not afford the hefty investment needed to tap AI, Xiang said.

The MIIT circular proposed the opening of a number of real‑world application scenarios, actively introducing service providers to carry out on‑the‑ground pilot projects, promoting their technological research and development and commercialization of results, creating benchmark solutions and generating a demonstration effect.

It called for exploring the use of models such as first‑purchase and first‑use incentives and risk compensation to increase procurement of services such as large-language models, agents, and tokens, thus improving the quality and efficiency of model and AI adoption across industries.

Regions with the necessary conditions are encouraged to establish and improve comprehensive "go global" service systems, and to leverage multilateral cooperation mechanisms and platforms such as the Belt and Road Initiative, BRICS, and China‑ASEAN cooperation mechanism to promote the overseas deployment of high‑quality AI application projects.

For AI service providers that plan to go global, certain government guidance and facilitation is also needed to ensure China's successful AI applications such as drones, intelligent and connected vehicles and robotics smoothly go to overseas markets, Xiang said.

China's AI industry exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan ($176.7 billion) in 2025, up 40 percent year-on-year, according to an estimate by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), a research institute under the MIIT.