A turning point has been highlighted in the latest report from an institution under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT): China's artificial intelligence is shifting from "busy training" to "busy working." News on November 1: the "Top 10 Trends in New Domains and New Quality Innovation and Development" released by the CCID Research Institute shows that China's AI inference data volume has exceeded training data volume for the first time, meaning the technology has moved beyond laboratory R&D and entered large-scale industrial deployment. For a public discussion long dominated by the narrative of "whose model is stronger," this signal brings attention back to a simpler fact: the technology is finally being used at scale.

From "Feeding Models" to "Using Models"

The most direct measure is usage volume. As of June 2026, China's average daily token usage exceeded 175 trillion, more than 1,000 times higher than at the beginning of 2024. Echoing this, the iteration cycle of top large models has been compressed from several months in the past to weeks or even days. Put together, the two curves outline the same thing: the focus of AI has shifted from pouring data into models to making models serve the outside world—the part where businesses and individuals actually put models to use is beginning to outweigh model-building itself. When inference demand starts pulling supply in turn, the industry has truly begun to run.

AI Starts Running in Factories

The breadth of real-world adoption is also expanding. As the "AI + Manufacturing" initiative goes deeper, China has built more than 500 excellence-level smart factories, covering 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities and reaching more than 80% of major manufacturing categories. Domestic computing power and large models have landed in more than 1,000 application scenarios across 20 industries such as steel and automobiles, driving new approaches such as personalized customization and full lifecycle services. Add to that earlier data—in the first half of the year, China's generative AI users surpassed 700 million, with penetration exceeding 50%—and a closed loop from supply to demand is clearly taking shape.