Blue book: Report on the Development of China’s Smart Internet (2026)

https://j.people.com.cn/n3/2026/0730/c95952-20483563.html

According to Liu Yunjie, an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Chief Scientist at Zijinshan Laboratory who wrote the preface for the report, China is currently making remarkable progress in the field of the smart internet. According to data released in July 2026 by ‘Cloudflare Radar,’ a global internet traffic monitoring and analysis platform, bot traffic accounted for 59.2% of HTTP requests in China, surpassing human traffic (40.8%). This indicates that the application of the smart internet in China is in a stage of rapid development. The release of this blue book will provide a strong boost to the exploration of smart internet development strategies suited to China.

According to Fan Zhengwei, Party Committee Secretary and President of People’s Daily Online, this year—marking the start of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030)—smart internet is opening up new possibilities for mainstream media. To adapt to the changing times, People’s Daily Online is steadily advancing its development with a focus on three key areas: content, data, and intelligence.

Specifically, this involves deepening the provision of high-quality content to reinforce the foundation of mainstream values ​​in the smart era; promoting the development of high-quality corpora to build new AI-friendly models and business formats; and enhancing independent AI innovation capabilities to drive the development of AI that is benevolent and inclusive. Additionally, People’s Daily Online’s first AI digital employee—’AI Employee No. 001’—was unveiled at the event. Aligning with the development trends of the smart internet, People’s Daily Online will continue to uphold the philosophy of ‘governing AI with AI and driving AI with wisdom.’

Tang Weihong, Vice President of People’s Daily Online, is the editor-in-chief of the blue book. According to Mr. Tang, smart Internet has already become a core engine for fostering ‘new quality productive forces’ and driving industrial transformation. Key characteristics of China’s Smart Internet development in 2025 include:

  •  the simultaneous rapid advancement of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the widespread adoption of AI agents;
  • ‘AI+’ driving the deepening of industrial applications;
  • the accelerated construction of industrial ecosystems;
  • the coordinated development of smart technologies and green initiatives; and
  • the evolution of Smart Internet governance toward a more practice-oriented phase.

Regarding future trends, the report projects that LLMs will make the leap from digital intelligence to physical AI, with vertical integration, commercialization, and large-scale deployment becoming the primary drivers of growth; that green intelligence and sustainable development will further converge; that the establishment of new governance frameworks and standardization will accelerate; and that China will actively participate in global governance and rule-making.

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