China’s central bank backs cautious push for AI in financial services

Li Wei’s remarks show how quickly AI has moved from a speculative technology to a core pillar of China’s financial modernization agenda. Positioning AI as an “important engine” of high‑quality growth, while simultaneously stressing “prudence” and “orderly” deployment, is Beijing’s way of saying: we want algorithmic credit scoring, robo‑advice and AI‑driven risk management—but not at the expense of systemic stability or political control. ([21jingji.com](https://www.21jingji.com/article/20251228/herald/3cc7b259591d01451705848e9430c4dc.html))

For the race to AGI, the signal is that Chinese authorities are not trying to slow core capability development; instead they are channeling it into tightly supervised sectors like finance where data advantages and regulatory leverage are strongest. Banks and fintechs will be incentivized to adopt large models and agents for everything from fraud detection to customer service, but under a governance model that keeps the central bank in the loop on standards, data security and model behavior. That favors big, state‑aligned tech vendors who can meet regulatory expectations over scrappy startups.

The competitive implication is that “AI‑first finance” may arrive faster in China than in many Western markets, but in a more centralized form. If successful, it could become an exportable template for other emerging economies that want AI‑enabled growth without ceding control of their financial systems to foreign cloud providers.