Companies rolling out AI in labor-intensive sectors face employment-risk checks in market-access reviews, while eligible intelligent-native firms can tap special job-stabilization loans.
China’s State Council has told provinces and ministries to steer artificial intelligence toward creating jobs and to slow the rate at which it replaces workers. The guideline, issued by the General Office of the State Council as document Guobanfa [2026] No. 29, was signed on October 16 and published on gov.cn on October 23. Xinhua reported that it lays out 18 tasks in six areas, running from AI’s potential to create jobs to the monitoring of employment risks.
The document, the Opinions on Adapting to AI Technology Development to Help Build an Employment-Friendly Development Model (《关于适应人工智能技术发展助力构建就业友好型发展方式的意见》), combines industrial measures with protections for workers. It encourages eastern regions to host core AI industries and guides central and western regions toward upstream and downstream work such as data labeling and smart-device manufacturing. It also adds an employment check to the approval of AI projects that could displace large numbers of workers.
The text sets no budget, target year or numerical goal, so its weight depends on how provinces and ministries translate it into local rules. For investors, the most concrete hooks are a financing channel for so-called intelligent-native companies and a review step that could slow AI deployment in labor-intensive industries.
The guideline groups 18 measures under six headings
The text opens with general requirements and closes with an implementation section; the 18 numbered measures sit between them. The first four cover job creation. Beyond the regional division of labor, the government will run an AI SME startup support plan (人工智能中小企业创业支持计划) that uses open-source ecosystems to help small firms innovate and start businesses. State investment funds, including a national venture capital guidance fund and a national AI industry investment fund, are to back AI companies on market terms.
The financing measure is specific. Authorities are to speed up the cultivation of intelligent-native enterprises (智能原生企业) and specialized "little giant" firms, and to include eligible companies, under existing rules, in special loans that help firms stabilize and expand jobs (金融助企稳岗扩岗专项贷款). Small and micro firms are encouraged to adopt low-cost, lightweight AI upgrades that lower the threshold for using the technology. The document also calls for new occupations and standards, naming digital managers, AI engineering technicians and AI trainers. Yicai, citing the government website, and 21jingji reported the same regional and lending passages.
The skills and services measures ask universities and vocational schools to train AI talent jointly, and encourage young graduates, migrant workers and the unemployed to join AI-related training. Public employment services are to use AI to match people with policies and jobs, and unemployment insurance is to be paid to eligible claimants in full and on time.
Job-risk reviews and an unemployment buffer address displacement
The sixth and seventh measures deal directly with job losses. AI is to be deployed first in roles with labor shortages or hazardous conditions. In labor-intensive industries, the document asks for a cautious and steady approach to the scope, intensity and pace of AI use, to limit the impact on workers.
Project reviewers are told to assess employment risk for AI application projects in market-access fields that could cause a large shock to jobs. Relevant departments must then arrange transition support. Companies are encouraged to explore an unemployment buffer period system (失业缓冲期制度), telling affected workers in advance when AI is rolled out at scale and helping them move into new roles. The buffer period is framed as encouragement, leaving adoption to employers.
Worker protections extend to hiring. The guideline calls for rules on AI in human resources management and for action against algorithm-driven hiring discrimination, fake recruitment and violations of privacy and rest rights. Flexible and gig workers are encouraged to join the urban employees’ basic pension scheme, and pilots of occupational injury protection for new forms of employment are to expand. Monitoring rests on cross-department data sharing, regional and sector models, and a group of AI employment research centers at universities and research institutes. AI-related job risks are to be added to China’s mechanism for preventing large-scale unemployment, with contingency plans.
Labor and planning departments now have to turn the text into practice
The guideline names human resources and social security departments and development and reform departments at every level as coordinators. It arrives 13 days after Li Zhong, vice minister of human resources and social security, told a State Council Information Office press conference that China would launch an initiative to boost employment amid AI advances, according to a Xinhua report from October 10. At that briefing, officials said China had created 10.52 million new urban jobs in the first nine months of 2026, 87.7% of the annual target, and that the surveyed urban unemployment rate averaged 5.2% over the first eight months. The guideline does not refer to that initiative by name.
Neither the guideline nor the reports on it say which companies qualify as intelligent-native, how large the special loan quota is, or which market-access fields fall under the new employment review. Provincial implementation documents and the first published list of companies eligible for the job-stabilization loans will show how far the measures reach into corporate AI plans.