China bets on AI to promote President Xi Jinping's thinking

June 5, 2026 3:32 AM EDT

China’s President Xi Jinping looks on during a signing ceremony together with Tajikistan's President Emomali Rahmon (not pictured) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China May 12, 2026. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/Pool  TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

BEIJING, June 5 (Reuters) - Xinhuanet, ‌owned by China's ​official ​Xinhua news agency, plans to invest over 1.1 billion yuan ($162.38 million) on an "authoritative" AI agent to help promote President ‌Xi Jinping's thinking, Shanghai Stock Exchange filings showed.

The project, ⁠known as "Xinhua Yudian," meaning Xinhua lexicon, is "an intelligent agent for learning, researching, and disseminating ‌Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism ‌with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era," the company said.

Driven by mainstream values and dedicated to "spreading the positive voice," the agentic ​AI will also provide users with current affairs and political news content to help them deal with information overload and "a dilemma of ⁠trust in distinguishing truth from falsehood".

China in March launched a sweeping "AI+" blueprint to encourage the ​adoption of artificial intelligence across all sectors of the economy. It also follows previous tech-driven efforts to broaden ​the reach of official state ideology among ‌an online-savvy younger generation.

In 2019, China rolled out a hit propaganda app known as "Xuexi Qiangguo," which literally translates ⁠as "Study to make China strong." At one point after its launch, it overtook WeChat and the Chinese version of TikTok to become the most popular ⁠app on Apple's China app store.

Xinhua's proposed agentic AI will present the essence ​of Xi's discourses to its users, who can rely on the tool as a politically sensitive citation checker, ensuring references to Xi's words "in official document writing ‌and policy interpretation are accurate and error-free."

To be built on the state-run news agency's "pure and clean" corpus library, ‌the AI will help deliver the party's voice to all sectors of ⁠Chinese society, lending further support ‌to "consolidating the ideological and ​public opinion foundation," the company said.

($1 = 6.7743 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Xiuhao Chen and Ryan Woo; Editing by ‌Sharon Singleton)



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