China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently issued the "AI Plus Software" Special Action Implementation Plan, setting out targets for the intelligent upgrade of the software and information technology services industry through 2028.
The plan aims for a significant improvement in the intelligence level of the software and information technology services industry, with promotion and application covering 20,000 software enterprises above designated size, a total of 100 intelligent technology upgrade projects for software enterprises carried out, 100 benchmark agent software applications built in key industries, and incubation of more than five high-quality open-source projects.
MIIT data showed that in the first eight months of this year, China's software business revenue exceeded 10.28 trillion yuan, up 8.8%. Total profit reached 1.1837 trillion yuan, up 1.3%, and software business exports came to 45.99 billion US dollars, up 12.5%. In 2025 the industry's revenue reached 15.48 trillion yuan, 6.2 times the 2012 level, with an average compound annual growth rate of 15.1%.
Domestic operating systems and databases have improved rapidly, industrial software now forms a product system covering key industries, and the influence of China's open-source ecosystem represented by domestic large models keeps growing. As of June 2026, China's daily token invocation volume had exceeded 500 trillion.
Experts said the plan will accelerate the reshaping of software and information technology services through AI, drive industry efficiency gains through intelligent programming, and advance both intelligent upgrading of software products and cultivation of agent software. The implementation manifests in three areas: changes in software production methods, restructuring of software product forms, and reshaping of service models.
Wang Weiwei, deputy director of the Department of Information Technology Development at MIIT, said intelligent programming tools now run through the full development workflow from requirements analysis and code generation to testing and operations, greatly improving efficiency and lowering the barrier to entry, shifting software development from supply-led to participatory by both supply and demand.
Source: Economic Daily / China Economic Net
