This year marks the beginning of the 15th Five-Year Plan period, with a new blueprint already laid out. Today, a special series titled "The First Year" focuses on key tasks to be steadily advanced over the next five years, starting with the development of the intelligent economy.

In recent months, buzzwords such as "small models," "intelligent agents," and "tokens" have increasingly entered public discourse, reflecting the growing influence of artificial intelligence across various sectors. The 15th Five-Year Plan outline emphasizes advancing the Digital China initiative and elevating digital-intelligent development. The 2026 Government Work Report also introduced, for the first time, the goal of building a new form of intelligent economy.

How can digital-intelligent capabilities be enhanced? What elements are essential to shaping this new intelligent economy? A look into the Yangtze River Delta provides some answers.

With two months remaining until the 2026 World Cup, related merchandise continues to sell briskly in Yiwu, Zhejiang. Factories in the surrounding area are operating at full capacity.

At a knitwear company in Jinhua, scarves for World Cup supporters are being produced in high volume. Despite having only thirty employees, the firm still relies on handwritten work orders to track daily output. This year, however, the owner decided to break with this 22-year tradition by integrating each worker’s tasks into a new digital system.

A quiet transformation is underway in the production methods of small traditional enterprises. By attaching a QR code, workers can scan to view order quantities, production techniques, and track the real-time status of goods. Rush orders and small-batch requests that were once avoided can now be assessed through system data to support decision-making.

Whether small or large, linking up with digital-intelligent systems has become inevitable.

Last month, China’s second domestically built large cruise ship, the "AIDA Huacheng," was launched from the Waigaoqiao Shipyard in Shanghai. In this mega-project, involving over a thousand systems and 25 million parts, the application of AI technology significantly improved both the speed and quality of work.

Each production process in shipbuilding is a complex system. In recent years, individual systems have been developing their own AI models. Integrating these dispersed models into a more efficient and unified "brain" has become a key objective for the Waigaoqiao Shipyard.

Across the country, efforts are being made to grasp the trends of digitalization, networking, and intelligentization, and to better empower industries with AI to foster a new intelligent economy. In Shanghai, experiments in deep integration of AI and industry began several years ago.

According to Tang Wenkan, Deputy Secretary of the Shanghai Economic and Information Technology Party Committee and Director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, "We must fully implement the 'AI Plus' initiative, use AI to lead industrial transformation, and accelerate the formation of a new intelligent economy. The key lies in cultivating an innovation ecosystem and supplying new quality factors."

What kind of ecosystem and factors are needed to build this new intelligent economy? This is a question that AI expert Zhou Bowen has been pondering.

Zhou Bowen, Director and Chief Scientist of the Shanghai AI Laboratory, stated, "We are at a historic inflection point. AI technology has matured enough to genuinely transform industries, yet the full transformation has not yet occurred. Infrastructure must evolve from being merely adequate to being AI-ready. Computing power, data, and models must be capable of coordinated scheduling."

Zhou demonstrated the first key element: open-source general-purpose large models.

"The value of an AI model is not measured by test scores, but by its ability to help scientists discover new scientific principles or assist engineers in solving practical industrial problems more efficiently," he explained.

In recent years, China has seen the emergence of a number of open-source general models. Shanghai alone has 150 large models that have passed regulatory filing, providing great convenience for AI development and giving rise to a new economic model: OPC, or "one person, one computer, plus AI tools," enabling individuals to start their own companies.

When meeting Wang Wei, she was busy using AI software to adjust character designs. Two years ago, she was a deputy creative director at an advertising agency, collaborating with production teams. Now, she runs a "one-person company," independently handling the entire process of creating advertising short films.

Wang’s company is based in a startup community for solo entrepreneurs in Shanghai’s Xuhui District, where many policies are tailored for "AI-plus" ventures.

Lin Le, Deputy Director of the Xuhui District Science and Technology Commission, said, "We provide OPC enterprises with support such as model vouchers, computing power vouchers, and data vouchers. Computing power can be used first and paid for later. Financially, Xuhui District has established the Zaozao Fund, offering 1 million yuan in financing support for outstanding OPC projects. We have already invested in nearly 100 projects."

In this inaugural year, Xuhui District alone plans to establish five such OPC communities, offering 2,500 workstations and attracting numerous solo entrepreneurs.

Li Miaoyi, a solo entrepreneur, remarked, "The park recently surveyed us about our needs. Our innate desire is for more computing power—with it, we can accomplish more."

This corporate demand points to the second key element: sufficient computing power. Shanghai has already built intelligent computing capacity exceeding 140,000 P. However, when training large models, multiple computing centers may be involved. Ensuring they cooperate to provide stable data services is a challenge Zhou Bowen and his team are addressing.

"Our lab is researching DeepLink technology, which can integrate discrete computing resources. You can see computing power coming from different locations, trained uniformly, while also enabling future scheduling across eight major computing hubs," Zhou noted.

To meet the computing demands of the intelligent economy, a series of new infrastructure projects are underway across the country.

In Wuhu, Anhui Province, a cube-shaped building known as the "Silicon Cube" serves as a computing center. Each light represents a domestically produced server performing high-speed calculations. As one of ten national data center clusters under China's "East Data West Computing" project, Wuhu has built seven computing centers, with computing power becoming a new engine for the city’s development.

Months before reporters visited, the center incorporated space-based computing power from satellites. Since the Wuhu cluster began construction in 2022, it has attracted numerous companies to build data centers. To ensure these facilities contribute to local growth, Wuhu established a big data investment and operation company, creating a provincial computing power coordination platform and identifying computing-related industries.

With a public platform for computing services, data processing has become the first industrial cluster centered on computing power. Upstairs, an AI incubation base named "Computing Cube" has attracted over 20 companies specializing in algorithms and data.

During a visit, a seminar on authorizing the use of public medical data was underway, with strong attendance. Through a secure technical platform built by Wuhu’s big data company, the city is considering authorizing the development of certain medical data. Enterprises and experts from healthcare, data operations, and model development attended the meeting.

This seminar highlighted the third key element: fluid data.

Wuhu is a hub for traditional manufacturing, including automobiles, home appliances, and shipbuilding. As data and computing power accumulate, the transformation of traditional manufacturing is accelerating. At one robotics company, several new robot models are launched each year.

Originally a department within an automotive firm, the robotics unit became an independent company in 2025, expanding its product range and output.

On local farms, data from sensors and drones, once used only for seasonal production, now form the foundation for agricultural large models.

Whether in Wuhu or Shanghai, a fourth essential element for advancing the intelligent economy is clear: security and governance. Public data must circulate on independent, encrypted platforms. AI usage requires strengthened oversight, and national AI security standards are already under development.

Efforts to explore the new form of intelligent economy are expanding across the country.

Beijing is establishing several national AI application pilot bases in healthcare, manufacturing, and education.

Dongguan, Guangdong, has hosted innovation conferences opening over 100 application scenarios.

Shandong is implementing a "Double Hundred" AI project, aiming to cultivate 100 enterprises and 100 industry-specific large models.