On February 19, 2024, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) held the Special Conference of Central SOEs on AI Advancement, themed with "AI as an Enabler of Industrial Renewal". Zhang Yuzhuo, Party Committee Secretary and Director of the SASAC, attended and addressed the conference. E Weinan, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was invited to introduce the innovative development of AI. Tan Zuojun, Yuan Ye, and Wang Hongzhi, Members of the CPC Committee and Vice Chairmen, SASAC, attended the conference via video. Gou Ping, Member of the CPC Committee and Vice Chairman, SASAC, presided over the conference. Weng Zuliang, Party Group Secretary and Chairman of China Minmetals, attended the conference.

It was noted at the conference that accelerating the development of AI is an inevitable requirement for central state-owned enterprises (central SOEs) to fulfill their missions, seize strategic opportunities, nurture new productive forces, and promote high-quality development. Central SOEs should proactively embrace the profound changes brought by AI, and prioritize the development of a new generation of AI. They need to continuously enhance innovation strategies and application demonstrations, and attract more talents to build AI industry clusters. By leveraging their advantages in large demand, comprehensive industrial support, and diverse application scenarios, they should take the lead in promoting AI in traditional industries. Besides, they should accelerate the construction of an intelligent economy characterized by data-driven processes, human-machine collaboration, cross-disciplinary integration, co-creation and sharing.

It was also emphasized at the conference that central SOEs should incorporate the development of AI into their overall planning, promote industrial renewal, and accelerate the layout and development of the AI industry. They should solidify the foundation for development by concentrating resources in the most needed and advantageous areas, speed up the construction of a number of intelligent computing centers, and better leverage the role of collaborative innovation platforms for central SOEs by deepening opening-up and cooperation. SASAC also urged central SOEs to launch AI+ special actions, enhance demand-driven strategies, and expedite support for key industries, so as to establish high-quality multimodal datasets, and build a large industry-enabling ecosystem encompassing infrastructure, algorithm tools, intelligent platforms and solutions.

At the conference, representatives from leading AI companies and central SOEs delivered speeches. 10 central SOEs signed a proposal, expressing their commitment to proactively making AI application scenarios open to the public.