A view of a data center in Qingyang, Gansu province. [Photo/Xinhua]

Centrally administrated State-owned enterprises in China should act as key providers of intelligent computing infrastructure and promoters of artificial intelligence empowerment across sectors to better serve the country's overall development, officials and experts said.

Zhang Yuzhuo, chairman of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, made the remarks at a meeting on deepening the "AI+" special action on Tuesday.

Zhang emphasized that central SOEs should raise their political stance and function as organizers of systematic industrial layouts.

He highlighted the importance of grasping global AI trends and utilizing the formulation of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) to identify the specific positioning and advantages of central SOEs.

The commission underscored the need for enterprises to enhance their sense of urgency and strengthen independent innovation. The goal is not only to break through key core technologies and large language models, but also to transform research samples into industrial products.

SASAC also stressed the importance of cultivating application scenarios that align with main business needs, focusing on high adaptability and reliability to drive large-scale implementation.

Furthermore, the meeting called for expanded effective investment in computing power, specifically highlighting the coordinated development of "computing plus electricity" and improved data governance to solidify the overall industrial foundation.

Regarding ecosystem collaboration, enterprises are encouraged to upgrade open-source communities, strive to become "empowerment-oriented" entities and build a mutually beneficial "AI+" industrial community.

In recent years, SASAC's "AI+" special action has yielded significant results, including accelerated high-value applications, steady progress in data sharing and breakthroughs in autonomous model construction.

The National Bureau of Statistics said the number of AI enterprises in China now exceeds 6,000. The core industry scale is expected to surpass 1.2 trillion yuan ($166 billion) in 2026, representing a year-on-year increase of nearly 30 percent.

China has become the largest holder of AI patents, accounting for 60 percent of the global total, while cumulative downloads of domestic open-source large models have exceeded 10 billion.

A market outlook report by CICC suggests that the key AI era for consumer electronics has arrived, with this year expected to be a critical period for mass adoption and a new wave of device upgrades.

Zhang Yaqin, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and dean of the Institute for AI Industry Research at Tsinghua University, said AI development is undergoing a paradigm shift from pure technical breakthroughs to deep industrial integration and governance.

Zhang said China has forged a unique path centered on extreme efficiency optimization in computing and models, achieving cost-effective and inclusive goals through open-source and hardware-software synergy.

China's ability to deeply implement AI in vertical industries has become a core competitiveness, he added.