NDRC briefing covers AI jobs impact and 'AI+' policy framework

On November 3, 2026, China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) held a press conference under its 'Striving Forward in the 15th Five-Year Plan' series, covering efforts to cultivate new growth drivers. Wang Ruomeng, deputy director-general of the Department of Innovation and High-Tech Development, said that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period China will advance the 'AI+' initiative along three coordinates. On the 'point' level, application R&D will be organized by scenario, prioritizing mining, high-altitude work, and emergency rescue — settings characterized as dangerous, dirty, repetitive, complex, and difficult — with the goal of resolving industry pain points and building model deployments. On the 'line' level, the NDRC will keep pushing the development of national AI application pilot-testing bases for manufacturing, energy, transportation, and healthcare, coordinating the supply of computing power, models, and data, speeding up standards work and application promotion, and lowering the threshold for industry adoption. On the 'surface' level, the focus is institutional: improving the 'AI+' policy framework, refining implementation plans for key industries, and drafting a classification guide for application scenarios.

At the same briefing, Wang also outlined four priorities for balancing AI development and security during the 15th Five-Year Plan period: building a governance rules system that clarifies compliance boundaries; improving the regulatory environment and its adaptability; defining coordinated governance responsibilities across multiple parties, with the NDRC framing safety risk prevention as a shared responsibility of government departments, industry organizations, enterprises, and the public; and addressing AI's social impacts in a people-first, upward-looking manner. On employment, the NDRC said it will closely monitor AI's effect on the employment structure, while emphasizing AI's capacity to create new jobs and stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship. It also said it will promote the inclusion of emerging occupations such as model trainers and data annotators in the national occupational classification system. As of now, these measures remain policy plans announced at the press conference.