China has over 700 million generative AI users, report shows

China's generative artificial intelligence users exceeded 700 million in the first half of 2026, with penetration surpassing 50 percent, a latest industry report showed on Tuesday.

The report was released by the policy and international cooperation institute of the China Internet Network Information Center and underscores the rapid expansion of generative AI in China.

About 47.8 percent used generative AI to process images or video, 37.6 percent for text-related tasks, and 32.5 percent to prepare work summaries, meeting minutes, or presentation slides.

Usage of general-purpose AI assistants and AI productivity tools both more than doubled from a year earlier, according to the report.

AI is also increasingly shaping consumer spending. About 38.7 percent of Chinese internet users bought smart hardware online during the previous six months, including 20.2 percent who purchased wearable devices and 18.2 percent who bought products such as smartphones or tablet computers.

China has made expanding the domestic AI industry a strategic priority, seeking to build more homegrown computing capacity and reduce reliance on foreign technology while accelerating the deployment of AI across the economy.

The report said China's AI computing capacity reached 2,185 EFLOPS by the end of June, up 177 percent from a year earlier.

China also put into operation its first domestically developed AI supercluster containing 100,000 accelerator cards, using Chinese technology across chips, computing, storage, networking, and cooling systems, the report said.

Domestic model developers have also continued to scale up their systems. Chinese companies — including DeepSeek and Moonshot AI — have released open-source models with parameter counts in the trillions, the report said.

It added that the top six models on what it described as a major global model-usage ranking were developed by Chinese teams, while domestic AI models were increasingly being adapted to run on Chinese-designed computing chips.

AI applications have expanded into industries including steel, non-ferrous metals, electricity, and telecommunications, reaching areas such as product development, quality inspection, and customer service.

China built more than 120,000 high-quality datasets by mid-2026, according to the report, as policymakers seek to develop an ecosystem linking computing power, models, and data.

Notably, manufacturing is emerging as one of the biggest testing grounds. By the end of June, China had developed 16 national-level advanced manufacturing clusters focused on digital industries, including integrated circuits and artificial intelligence.

More than 30 percent of large manufacturing companies were using AI technology, with applications spanning research and design, production, quality inspection, and equipment maintenance, the report said.

Embodied AI, which combines AI models with physical machines such as robots, meanwhile has become one of the sector's fastest-growing areas.

China had more than 400 humanoid robot products in the first half of 2026, and full-year production of humanoid robots is expected to exceed 100,000 units, the report said.

Capital has also followed the expansion. China recorded 1,255 AI-related investment and financing transactions in the first half of 2026, equivalent to 78 percent of the total number recorded during all of 2025.

The value of those transactions reached about 250.14 billion yuan($37.32 billion), already 182 percent of the amount raised during the whole of last year, according to the report.