China’s Nanjing accelerates AI software industry with new initiative

The Nanjing announcement is a reminder that beneath the headline battles between DeepSeek, Alibaba and ByteDance, there’s a second layer of the Chinese AI race happening at the provincial and municipal level. By using a high‑profile Jiangsu AI Industry Development Conference as a launchpad, Nanjing is signaling that it wants to be a focal point for AI software platforms and applications within one of China’s most industrially advanced provinces. ([js.people.com.cn](https://js.people.com.cn/n2/2025/1229/c360301-41456797.html?utm_source=openai))

For the AGI race, these local initiatives matter because they determine where the next generation of applied AI companies and engineering talent will cluster. Cities that invest early in AI software ecosystems, developer tooling and SME adoption can become powerful feeders into national champions, supplying both domain‑specific applications and specialized talent. In China’s highly coordinated system, municipal pushes like this also tend to come with preferential land, subsidies and procurement—meaning AI firms that align with local priorities may find accelerated pathways to scale.

At a global level, initiatives like Nanjing’s contribute to the diffusion of advanced AI beyond Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, making China’s AI landscape more resilient and harder to map from the outside. For foreign competitors and policymakers, it’s a cue that “China’s AI capacity” is not monolithic but built from dozens of such regional bets.