Alibaba's Cai Chongxin: China's Electric Power Gives AI Development Confidence

How Can China’s Power Investment Provide Cost Advantages for the AI Industry?

Text | Gu Lingyu

Editor | Zhu Yuting

On March 22, the China Development Forum 2026 Annual Conference was held in Beijing, with the theme “China in the 14th Five-Year Plan: High-Quality Development and New Opportunities for Co-Creation.” Alibaba Group Chairman Daniel Zhang was invited to attend and delivered a speech. He focused on the field of artificial intelligence, analyzing the core factors behind China’s breakthroughs and sustained development in AI.

He believes that China’s breakthroughs and ongoing development in AI rely on three core factors.

(Cai Chongxin at the forum. Photo source: Gu Lingyu)

First is the strategic layout of national power infrastructure. Over the past decade, China has continuously increased investment in power transmission, maintaining the world’s leading annual investment. By the end of 2025, the installed power generation capacity will reach 3.9 billion kilowatts, with net new capacity in 2025 ten times that of the United States, mainly from clean energy sources like solar power. This provides ample energy supply and cost advantages for energy-intensive AI industries, laying a solid foundation for industry development.

Second is the belief in win-win open-source collaboration. China is breaking down technical barriers through open-source models, making AI no longer the privilege of a few giants. By 2025, China’s open-source models lead global downloads, allowing developers worldwide to freely access, fine-tune, and deploy, significantly lowering the barriers to AI usage. This makes intelligent technology a public good for all humanity, promoting global economic growth and improved living standards through open-source initiatives.

Third is the deep integration of manufacturing and AI. China has the world’s largest manufacturing system and a complete industrial chain. Manufacturing value-added accounts for nearly 30% of the global total. Massive industrial data generated during digitalization and intelligent transformation has become the core resource for training industrial AI. Leveraging its scale and data advantages, China is leading the development of a highly competitive industrial AI system, continuously improving manufacturing quality and efficiency.

Cai Chongxin emphasized that the ultimate goal of developing AI is not just to research cutting-edge models but to promote AI application and benefit society. The State Council’s “AI+” action plan released in August 2025 envisions that by 2030, 90% of industries will have widespread AI applications, providing clear direction for industry development.

Alibaba believes that the widespread adoption of AI across all scenarios will create enormous market opportunities. The company is actively promoting AI deployment in personal consumption, enterprises, healthcare, finance, and other fields, entering the era of intelligent agents. Relying on self-developed foundational models and real-world application feedback data, Alibaba has created a “data flywheel” for model iteration. Its Qianwen app has become an important platform for popularizing AI applications.

Cai Chongxin stated that, amid complex geopolitical tensions, supply chain security and the sharing of technological achievements face challenges. However, Chinese technology companies are willing and capable of providing certainty in uncertain times. Alibaba’s development is deeply rooted in the Chinese market, and the company is confident in China’s economic and technological future. Moving forward, China will continue to export intelligent manufacturing capabilities to the world. The achievements of Chinese technology will benefit global development, and Alibaba is willing to work with all sectors of the world to create a better future.