The Central Economic Work Conference, held on 11 and 12 December 2024, set the priorities for 2025 and explicitly called for an “AI Plus” (人工智能+) initiative. The phrase is short, but it marks a shift: AI had been treated as a sector to be developed, and the conference treated it as an instrument for developing everything else.
What “AI Plus” signals
The framing deliberately echoes the earlier “Internet Plus” approach, which pushed internet capability into traditional industries rather than merely growing internet companies. “AI Plus” follows the same logic — embedding models into manufacturing, services and public administration so that productivity gains appear outside the AI sector itself.
That has consequences for how policy support will be shaped. Expect demand-side measures, sector-specific deployment plans and procurement programmes, rather than purely supply-side funding for model developers. The line runs clearly from this conference to the 2025 Central Economic Work Conference, the State Council AI Plus action opinion and the 2025 Government Work Report, with the State Council executive meeting adding implementation momentum and the AI Plus manufacturing action plan carrying it into specific sectors.
What it means for AI companies
The first implication is positioning. A company selling “an AI model” competes for research attention; a company selling “an AI system that raises line throughput in a named industry” competes for budget. The conference language rewards the second framing.
The second implication is that sector knowledge becomes a legal-adjacent asset. Deployment in manufacturing, healthcare or transport brings sector rules, data requirements and safety expectations that pure software vendors are not used to. Companies that build compliance capability before they win a sector deal are the ones that keep it.
The third implication is timing. Conference signals typically take a year or more to become concrete measures, which gives companies a planning window — but only if they read the signal early rather than waiting for the implementing document.
Practical actions for AI companies
Align product narratives with named industries. Watch the implementing plans rather than the headlines, since those contain the eligibility criteria. And treat “AI Plus” as a demand forecast, not a subsidy announcement: the opportunity it describes is a market, and markets are entered with a product, not with a policy.
This article is based on the readout of the Central Economic Work Conference of December 2024 and public information and is for reference only; it does not constitute legal advice.