In June 2026 the Ministry of Transport, together with the National Railway Administration, the Civil Aviation Administration of China, the State Post Bureau and China Railway, released the Action Plan on Innovative Application Scenarios for “AI Plus Transportation”, setting out ten priority directions and an initial 41 priority scenarios.
Ten directions
The plan focuses on ten priority directions: intelligent driving, smart highways, smart railways, intelligent shipping, smart civil aviation, smart postal services, smart construction and maintenance, smart travel services, smart freight and smart safety supervision. These broadly cover the full chain of “vehicle — infrastructure — operations and services — safety supervision”.
The plan proceeds scenario by scenario: clarifying the scenario owner, organising pilot implementation, clustering innovation entities, forming scenario-level solutions, and promoting the adoption of smart terminals and agents.
Intelligent driving as the first track
Among the ten directions, intelligent driving is placed first. The plan calls for R&D and testing of end-to-end large models for intelligent driving, and for intelligent testing technology R&D and verification across scenarios such as road freight, park transport and short-distance shuttling, exploring a test system combining virtual and real.
The keywords are “end-to-end” and “virtual-real combination”. End-to-end means the chain from perception to decision is borne by the model as a whole, changing testing and verification methods; virtual-real combination points to a combination of simulation and real-vehicle testing, consistent with industry practice in autonomous-driving safety verification.
Relationship with “AI Plus” as a whole
Transport is one of the high-value scenarios for “AI Plus” implementation. Special actions already exist in manufacturing and software; the shared logic is to use industry scenarios as the lever to combine technology and industry rather than speaking of technology capability in the abstract.
Compliance threads in scenario implementation
The closer a scenario is to real operations, the more concrete the compliance issues.
First, data compliance. Intelligent driving and shipping involve large volumes of sensor, location and behavioural data, possibly including personal information and even important data. Collection, storage, use and cross-border arrangements must be clarified at the project design stage.
Second, liability allocation. In the event of an accident in autonomous driving or shipping, how liability is divided among vehicle manufacturers, software suppliers and operators must be arranged in advance. Contracts should clarify the boundaries of data provision, model services and operational responsibility.
Third, security assessment and access. High-risk scenarios such as intelligent driving usually carry access requirements including test permits and security assessment, and companies should reserve compliance time.
Fourth, the determination and authorisation of infrastructure data. Scenarios such as smart highways and smart construction and maintenance involve the collection and use of infrastructure data, whose ownership and authorisation chain must be clear.
Three pointers for participating companies
First, pick the right scenario entry point. The 41 priority scenarios correspond to different entities and requirements; companies should choose scenarios matching their own technology stack rather than spreading broadly.
Second, build compliance into the solution design. Compliance in transport scenarios is not patched before launch but embedded from the testing and data plan stage.
Third, value multi-party cooperation contracts. Scenario owners, technology providers and operators are often different entities, and data, liability and IP arrangements should be clear in the cooperation contract in advance. For support on transport-scenario data compliance, liability arrangements and cooperation contracts, see our Data Compliance and Commercial Contracts services.
This article is based on public information from the Action Plan on Innovative Application Scenarios for ‘AI Plus Transportation’ released by the Ministry of Transport and other bodies in June 2026. It is for reference only and does not constitute legal advice. Specific implementation requirements are subject to the official documents.