AI has spread across China with startling speed. Ten people describe what it now allows them to do.

An 11-year-old schoolboy in Shanghai composing his own songs. A farmer in Henan identifying unfamiliar weeds in his fields. A college student in Suzhou chatting with an AI boyfriend she designed herself.

They are among 10 people across China — young and old, rural and urban, farmers, students, doctors, and entrepreneurs — who have nearly all begun using generative AI tools regularly within the past three years.And they are hardly alone. By the end of 2025, more than 600 million people in China were using generative AI tools, a user base that had grown 141% in just one year, according to official industry data.

The speed of the shift is striking, but the groundwork was laid nearly a decade ago. In 2016, Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo defeated world champion Lee Sedol at the ancient game of Go, long considered too complex for computers to master. The victory jolted China’s tech sector and helped push AI to the center of national strategy.

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