China aims to be $59 billion global leader in AI by 2025

Setting a goal to be a global innovation center in Artificial Intelligence (AI) , China policy makers has issued a guideline to gain competitive advantage internationally.

They also see AI as new driver of economic expansion and include it in all the fields such as Software and Hardware, Intelligence Robotics, Vehicles, Virtual Reality and Augment Reality. Policy makers want to be global leader, with the AI industry generating more than 400 billion yuan ($59 billion) of output per year by 2025, according to an announcement from the State Council.

The guideline points out that China wants to solve issues including a lack of high-end computer chips, software and trained personnel. Beijing would also play a bigger role via policy support and regulation.

The most populated country on the planet has already pumped in huge amount in AI. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has also outlined it as a strategic technology in an annual report this year.

In February, the country's powerful state planner opened an AI lab in partnership with Baidu Inc, the country's top search engine, which is making a major push in to AI. The technology is considered another industrial revolution similar to the advent of the electricity and the internet.

China also does not want to lag behind rival US market leaders such as Alphabet Inc's Google and Microsoft Corp, in a technology that is increasingly part of everyday life. According to Rui Yong, CTO of Lenovo Group quoted by Reuters, China see this trend coming and they want to invest more, the local and central government are supporting this.

Beijing's AI plan comes as the United States is poised to bolster its scrutiny of investments, including artificial intelligence, over fears that countries including China could access technology of strategic military importance. Globally, the technology will contribute as much as $15.7 trillion to output by 2030, according to a PwC report.

State Council guidelines also appealed for China’s businesses, universities and armed forces to work in developing the technology. More AI professionals and scientists should be trained, the report added. It also called for promoting interdisciplinary research to connect AI with other subjects such as cognitive science, psychology, mathematics and economics. Traditional industries should be integrated with AI to develop smart manufacturing, agriculture, finance, logistics and business.

Another report from Accenture Plc and Frontier Economics last month estimated that AI could increase China’s annual growth rate by 1.6 percentage point to 7.9 percent by 2035 in terms of gross value added, a close proxy for GDP, adding more than $7 trillion.

China, the second largest economy in the world, trails the US by $7 trillion. China’s economy grew by 6.7% in 2016, compared with America’s 1.6%, according to the IMF.

China will be in first place by 2050, because emerging economies will continue to grow faster than advanced ones, said a study by PricewaterhouseCooper. India will rank second, the US will be third.