The PRC’s 15th Five-Year Plan: Inside the AI+ Agenda

How the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Plans to Leverage Artificial Intelligence to Remain Competitive

NOTE: This is the second post in Strider’s series on the PRC’s 15^th Five-Year Plan (FYP). The first post provided an overview of the 15^th FYP’s major themes. This post examines the AI+ Action Plan in greater detail.

On March 13, 2026, China adopted the 15^th Five-Year Plan (FYP) for National Economic and Social Development. Among its most consequential priorities is artificial intelligence, which the 15^th FYP frames as a sweeping imperative touching every dimension of the PRC’s economy, governance, and society.

The AI+ Action Plan (AI+), first announced in 2024 and included as part of the 15^th FYP, is Beijing’s clearest statement to date on how it intends to develop artificial intelligence to reshape the competitive landscape. For foreign organizations across sectors, understanding what AI+ explicitly directs and where the risks are most concentrated is essential.

AI+ spans six domains: science and technology, industrial development, consumption, public services, governance, and international cooperation. Each domain carries its own set of directives, but the underlying logic is consistent: embed AI deeply and deliberately, from laboratory research and factory floors to healthcare, education, and security. Together, they represent the PRC’s most comprehensive attempt yet to make AI a foundational element of how the country operates and competes.

Building the Foundation

The PRC is prioritizing the development of a national AI foundation built on computing infrastructure, advanced algorithms, and large-scale data. In parallel, the 15^th FYP calls for strengthening capabilities in advanced chips, optoelectronic components, and industrial software—the hardware layer underpinning AI development and the primary focus of Western export controls.

The push to build this AI foundation reflects Beijing's longstanding effort to reduce external dependence—one that has only intensified as geopolitical tensions deepened through the 14^th FYP period. Supply chain disruptions and tightening technology restrictions reinforced what PRC officials had already identified as a structural vulnerability. The 15^th FYP sharpens that emphasis, structuring development to operate under and adapt to those constraints as a baseline condition.

Science and Industry

In science and technology, AI+ calls for accelerating AI-driven research paradigms and technology innovation models. This includes building intelligent research platforms, assembling high-quality scientific datasets, and strengthening cross-disciplinary collaboration between AI and adjacent fields, including quantum science, life sciences, advanced materials, new energy, and 6G. The objective is to reshape how research is conducted—using AI to accelerate discovery, compress development timelines, and reduce reliance on foreign expertise and institutions.

On the industrial side, AI+ calls for embedding AI across the full spectrum of business activities, from manufacturing or service delivery to operations (distribution, human resources, marketing, and more). Energy is an explicit priority, with AI-driven innovation targeted at power system management, energy exploration, and renewable energy forecasting. Agriculture is another, with applications in bio-breeding, production management, and disease prevention. AI+ also targets service sectors, calling for expanded AI agents and intelligent terminals across software and IT services, finance, transportation, and logistics.

Society and Consumption

In public services, AI+ targets two sectors with specificity: education and healthcare. AI-powered learning companions, teaching assistants, and personalized learning tools are all mentioned, with the aim of building a new model for how instruction is delivered. The focus on education also reflects a longer-term goal of the PRC: using AI to elevate talent across the population, expanding access to quality instruction and building a more capable workforce at scale. In healthcare, the focus is on expanding AI-assisted diagnosis and treatment into primary care institutions, extending capabilities beyond major urban hospitals to the broader population. Across both sectors, the deeper aim is to reshape how essential services are delivered and prepare the country for a future in which AI is central to both.

The consumption side reflects a different ambition. AI+ calls for developing AI-native applications, promoting next-generation intelligent devices, and expanding consumer use cases through AI experience centers. These directives are aimed at embedding AI into daily life in ways that shape consumer expectations, drive domestic demand, and create new markets for PRC technology companies.

Governance and Global Reach

Domestically, AI+ expands AI into core state functions, including market regulation, workplace safety, public security, cyberspace governance, and environmental protection. It also calls for developing frameworks to manage not only people, but the AI systems operating alongside them. With new AI-generated virtual personas and intelligent robots, the PRC is building the infrastructure for AI-enabled governance. The PRC will likely seek to establish the AI governance models it develops as the global standard for AI regulation.

The PRC’s international ambitions outlined in AI+ are equally significant. It calls for establishing a World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, developing multilateral AI cooperation platforms under the Belt and Road Initiative, and establishing an International AI Application Cooperation Center. AI+ also emphasizes joint development of AI regulatory frameworks, technical standards, and ethical guidelines, alongside a globally open AI open-source ecosystem and developer community. Together, these initiatives create structured channels through which the PRC can engage with foreign institutions, technologies, and talent on its own terms.

What This Means for Foreign Organizations

The AI+ Action Plan is a blueprint for system-wide transformation at national scale. For foreign organizations, these ambitions translate into tangible and growing risks that extend beyond the technology sector itself.

The competition for talent will intensify. As the PRC scales its AI-enabled industrial ecosystems, demand for advanced technical expertise will continue to outpace domestic supply. The 15^th FYP’s emphasis on attracting high-end talent, combined with programs like the “New Thousand Talents Program” targeting scientists in AI, information technology, synthetic biology, and advanced materials, means that foreign research institutions and technology companies will face more coordinated, better resourced, and sustained recruitment pressure over the next five years.

IP exposure will increase. Embedding AI across the full industrial chain means that the PRC is building data assets, training models, and developing capabilities across sectors where foreign organizations have built competitive advantage over decades. Joint ventures, research collaborations, and open-source code contributions are a few examples of pathways state actors can leverage to gain access for unfair advantage—many times without detection.

The standards race is underway. The PRC’s push to shape international AI regulatory frameworks, technical standards, and ethical guidelines is a strategic effort to shape the global order to favor its systems, supply chains, and governance models. As these standards spread globally, they could give PRC firms a lasting competitive edge while making it harder for foreign competitors to enter the market.

Conclusion

The 15^th Five-Year Plan’s AI+ Action Plan is one of the most expansive AI integration directives adopted by any government to date. It reaches into science, industry, consumption, governance, and global cooperation simultaneously, and is backed by the full weight of the PRC’s central planning system. Implementation will unfold over years, but the pressure it will generate on foreign organizations is already taking shape.

The next post in this series will examine the 15^th FYP’s talent agenda—specifically how the PRC’s global recruitment push is being reorganized, rebranded, and scaled—and what that means in the competition for advanced-technology expertise.