At a press conference on 3 November 2026, Wang Ruomeng, deputy director-general of the National Development and Reform Commission's (NDRC) innovation and high-tech department, set out how China plans to govern AI during the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030). The NDRC is China's main economic planning body.
Four strands of work
According to the Beijing Daily report, the plan has four parts:
- Rules and compliance boundaries. China will speed up a foundational and comprehensive AI law as the backbone of an AI legal system. It will also legislate on common building blocks such as data, compute and algorithms, and on key application scenarios, with safety standards and ethical guidelines covering the whole AI lifecycle. The rules will be reviewed regularly and adjusted as the technology changes.
- Adaptive supervision. Regulators will set reasonable transition periods and clear, predictable requirements, offer compliance guidance and assessment, consultancy and certification services to cut compliance costs, and support sector-specific AI regulatory sandboxes with defined entry and exit rules.
- Shared responsibility. Developers and operators will be pushed to disclose safety risks and to report security incidents and vulnerabilities. Government bodies will work towards mutual recognition of supervisory findings.
- Social impact. This covers monitoring job displacement, recognising new occupations such as model trainer and data annotator, tracing algorithmic discrimination and deepfakes, protecting minors and the elderly, and guarding against emotional dependence on AI.
Why it is notable
China has so far regulated AI through targeted measures, such as rules on algorithms, deep synthesis and generative AI. A single comprehensive law would bring it closer in structure to the EU AI Act. No draft text or timetable was published.
Why it matters financially
No cost figures were given. Even so, a comprehensive law covering the world's second-largest AI market would change compliance obligations for every developer and deployer operating in China, including foreign firms. The promised sandboxes and transition periods signal that Beijing wants to limit the hit to its domestic industry.