What’s the difference in “playing style”?
When humanoid robots enter the public eye to the beat of the Spring Festival Gala, and when large models begin to redefine the boundaries of "labor," a dramatic change in the times is accelerating.
This year's government work report proposed "creating a new form of smart economy" for the first time. New words such as "intelligent body", "smart native" and "satellite Internet" also appeared in the report, attracting much attention.
On March 6, Zheng Shajie, director of the National Development and Reform Commission, introduced at the economic press conference of the Fourth Session of the 14th National People's Congress that the "artificial intelligence +" action will be deepened to empower thousands of industries and serve thousands of households. The scale of artificial intelligence-related industries will grow to more than 10 trillion yuan by the end of the "15th Five-Year Plan".
As soon as my eyes fell, this "secret war" about the future had quietly begun.
After sorting through the 2026 government work reports from various regions, it was found that all 31 provinces across the country have made deployments in areas related to artificial intelligence and smart economy, hoping to win the opportunity in a new round of fierce competition.
As artificial intelligence is widely integrated into thousands of industries and deeply embedded in the underlying genes of regional economies, what various regions are facing is no longer a single technology competition, but an ecological reshaping that is tailored to local conditions.
In other words, the key to winning the initiative in the future is to find the "ecological niche" of differentiated breakthroughs in this wave of change.
lead
The smart economy is an economic form formed by the deep integration of artificial intelligence technology and various economic and social fields. Its core is to reconstruct the allocation of production factors through data, computing power, algorithms, etc., reshape the industrial competition pattern, reconstruct the division of labor in the global value chain, and ultimately promote the transformation of production and lifestyle and form new momentum for economic development.
Among them, technology is undoubtedly the driving force behind everything. Continuously breaking through the "ceiling" of technological innovation will inevitably require pathfinders to take root in the "no man's land", and Beijing is a typical representative.
On February 28, Beijing held a 2026 global digital economy benchmark city construction press conference and revealed that so far, a total of 216 large models have been registered, ranking first in the country. Behind this is its absolute leading core strength in the field of basic scientific research.
Data shows that the number of people in Beijing shortlisted for the AI 2000 list of the world's most influential scholars accounts for more than 40% of the country's total, and the total number of AI scholars reaches 15,000, accounting for 30% of the country's total. The unparalleled level of universities, human resources and innovation sources has become an important basis for anchoring its goal of becoming the “first city in artificial intelligence in the world”.
At the same time, Beijing is deeply involved in the formulation of the AI regulatory system and industry standards.
The work report of the Beijing Municipal Government clearly stated in the key tasks for 2026 that it will support the construction of an artificial intelligence cluster in Zhongguancun Science City; solidly promote the construction of a benchmark city for the global digital economy, promote the construction of new infrastructure such as intelligent computing power, comprehensively implement the "artificial intelligence +" action, and build a national artificial intelligence application pilot base.
According to the plan, Beijing will take about two years to achieve the scale of the core artificial intelligence industry exceeding one trillion yuan, and become a global artificial intelligence innovation highland with technological source power and industrial competitiveness.
Besides Beijing, Shanghai provides another “pathfinding” paradigm.
In January last year, in order to promote the high-quality development of my country's artificial intelligence industry, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Finance took the lead in establishing the National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund. The fund has a total scale of 60.06 billion yuan and is located in Xuhui District, Shanghai.
Prior to this, an artificial intelligence fund of funds with a scale of 22.5 billion yuan has landed in Xuhui District in 2024. Xuhui District, where the fund is located, is also the first artificial intelligence development cluster in Shanghai.
The Shanghai Municipal People's Government press conference held on February 7 further revealed that Shanghai will also build an AI international open source community and establish an AI Youth Entrepreneurship Fund to support the development of young entrepreneurs in Shanghai.
The "admission" of national AI strategic capital is not only a deep penetration of the entire artificial intelligence industry chain, but also a strategic investment in future industry dominance.
“A Shanghai plan for the joint development of finance and science and technology is taking shape.” According to local media, Shanghai has unique financial and scientific and technological resources to promote the joint construction of an international financial center and an international science and technology innovation center. Shanghai is already piloting the project.
This year's Shanghai Municipal Government Work Report has released a clear signal that it will "make greater efforts to cultivate and strengthen long-term capital and patient capital, improve the industry-finance docking mechanism, and promote more financial resources to support the expansion of domestic demand, technological innovation, advanced manufacturing, green development, and small, medium and micro enterprises."
application
Behind Beijing and Shanghai, a number of major economic provinces with manufacturing and market advantages regard the new form of smart economy as a new driving force for economic growth.
The urban evolution theory combed through the provincial government work reports and found that industrial empowerment and terminal applications have become the two core tracks for the deployment of smart economy in many major economic provinces.
As the world's largest manufacturing country, my country's manufacturing transformation and upgrading is an important scenario for "artificial intelligence +". Major manufacturing provinces have tacitly targeted manufacturing upgrades as the main battlefield for "artificial intelligence +".
As a major province in manufacturing and digital economy, Guangdong has an early layout in this field and has a clear practical path. Guangdong has all 31 major categories of the national economy in manufacturing, 15 of which rank first in the country in scale. In 2025, the scale of Guangdong's digital economy has exceeded 8 trillion yuan, ranking first in the country for nine consecutive years.
In other words, Guangdong’s confidence lies in the fact that it has both the most complete “scenario soil” and the most mature “digital base.”
Based on this, this year’s Guangdong government work report proposes to “accelerate the promotion of high-level applications of artificial intelligence in all areas, all-time, and across industries” and makes embodied intelligence and manufacturing upgrades the focus of industrial empowerment.
In specific practice, Guangdong will implement the "artificial intelligence +" action in depth, focusing on strengthening future industries such as intelligent robots, embodied intelligence, and brain-computer interfaces. At the same time, it anchors the position of manufacturing owners, uses AI to run through the entire chain of R&D, production, and sales, and creates a number of large vertical-field models and small scene-specific models to promote the in-depth transformation of "Made in Guangdong" into intelligence.
Different from Guangdong's "universal coverage" logic, Jiangsu and Shandong have taken different paths of "diagnostic upgrade" and "large-scale application" respectively.
Jiangsu relies on 16 advanced manufacturing clusters and 50 key industrial chains to carry out the "artificial intelligence + manufacturing" diagnostic action to promote the intelligent upgrading of the entire manufacturing process and move from a "big manufacturing province" to a "strong manufacturing province".
Based on a complete industrial system, especially industrial software, furniture and home appliance industries, Shandong has launched the "Double Hundred Project" of artificial intelligence, cultivating more than 100 characteristic enterprises and more than 100 industry-level and scenario-level large models and agents, and applying AI to all walks of life on a large scale.
In addition to the deep empowerment of industries, another core track of the smart economy is terminal applications.
Zhejiang has become a core representative of this track with its keen business sense. In 2025, Zhejiang's artificial intelligence core industry revenue will be approximately 680 billion yuan, an increase of more than 20%, confirming the strong monetization capabilities of its AI industry.
This year’s Zhejiang government work report clearly stated that it will vigorously develop “artificial intelligence + consumption” and promote the aggregation of multiple business formats and the integration of multiple scenarios.
Du Ping, deputy director and researcher of the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Development and Reform, previously wrote that Zhejiang should give full play to its advantages as a highland for the development of artificial intelligence and a benchmark province for new consumption, use artificial intelligence to empower consumption upgrades and drive industrial investment, and enhance the important role of consumption in expanding domestic demand and optimizing supply.
difference
For the central and western provinces and the old industrial bases in Northeast China, AI is a historic opportunity for their industries to catch up. Different from the eastern region's pursuit of a "large and comprehensive" whole-industrial ecology, these provinces are taking a "differentiated entry" path by relying on their respective characteristics and advantages.
Among them, some provinces with relatively good foundations in the science and technology industry have taken the lead in targeting subdivided areas and striving to seize the right to speak about artificial intelligence nationwide.
Anhui, Hunan, and Sichuan are simultaneously making efforts to build and strive to create a national artificial intelligence application pilot base, striving to solve the problem of disconnection between laboratory technology and industrial production lines; Chongqing is focusing on the circulation of data elements and promoting the innovative development pilot of the national trusted data space; Shaanxi is stuck in the smart manufacturing track, relying on the construction results of 16 national outstanding smart factories to form a first-mover advantage in the field of industrial intelligence.
For more central, western and northeastern provinces, it is a more common path to rely on unique local resource endowments to create AI comparative advantages. Computing power has become the common starting point for such regional layouts, and various regions have built computing power systems according to local conditions:
Chongqing iteratively upgrades the national (western) computing power dispatching platform, coordinates the layout of local computing power and integrates Xinjiang computing power into Chongqing, and makes good use of computing power coupons to reduce the cost of using computing power for small and medium-sized enterprises;
Anhui has improved its "four-in-one" overall planning and dispatching capabilities of general computing, intelligent computing, super computing, and quantitative computing, adding 17,000 P of intelligent computing power;
Liaoning plans to build green computing power centers in Shenyang, Dalian and western Liaoning.
In addition to the common layout of computing power, many places have deeply explored local characteristic resources and location advantages to create a unique "moat" for AI development and achieve misaligned competition:
Shanxi is solidly promoting the construction and operation of the national artificial intelligence application pilot base in the coal direction; Jilin is focusing on supporting areas such as machine generation and ice and snow sports…
Hubei takes advantage of the geographical center advantage of the "thoroughway of nine provinces" to build three major computing power circles: Wuhan, Yichang, and "Xiangshi";
Guangxi relies on its unique location facing ASEAN to build the "China-ASEAN National Artificial Intelligence Application Cooperation Center" with high standards. In the next three years, Guangxi will allocate 45 billion yuan to support the development of new productivity led by AI, including the construction of the ASEAN corpus and the Guangxi-ASEAN embodied intelligent pilot training ground, etc., to seize the opportunity of cross-border cooperation in AI.
A clear logic emerges from the deployment of these central and western provinces – they combine their own strengths with AI, either specific resources, unique locations, or subdivided industries that have been cultivated for many years.
This path of "making breakthroughs in long boards and using points to lead to areas" is becoming the confidence for the central and western regions to embrace the smart economy and pursue "overtaking on corners".
Looking at the artificial intelligence-related layout in various regions across the country, as each province finds its position in the "national game of chess", a new pattern of China's AI development with clear gradients, diversified distribution, and efficient coordination is accelerating to take shape.
