China’s public is increasingly worried about artificial intelligence, particularly what it means for their jobs. According to data analyzed by AI policy researcher Matt Sheehan, public concern about AI’s impact on employment has jumped from sixth place to second place in Chinese public opinion surveys over the past twelve months, a shift that represents one of the most significant changes in Chinese public sentiment about technology in recent years. The surge in anxiety is not abstract: it reflects the growing visibility of AI-driven automation in sectors that employ hundreds of millions of Chinese workers, and it is beginning to create political pressure on a government that has staked enormous resources and prestige on the success of its AI development strategy.
From Enthusiasm to Anxiety: The Shift in Chinese Public Sentiment
For much of the past decade, Chinese public attitudes toward artificial intelligence were broadly positive. Surveys consistently showed that Chinese citizens were more optimistic about AI than their counterparts in the United States or Europe, viewing it primarily as a source of economic opportunity and national pride rather than a threat to livelihoods. This optimism was grounded in a reasonable reading of the evidence: China’s AI development had created enormous wealth, generated millions of new jobs in the technology sector, and delivered tangible improvements in services ranging from healthcare to transportation.
What has changed is the visibility of AI’s displacement effects. As AI systems have become capable enough to perform tasks that were previously the exclusive domain of human workers, such as writing, translation, customer service, basic software development, image creation, and increasingly complex forms of analysis. The workers in those fields have begun to feel the consequences directly. In China’s vast manufacturing sector, the deployment of AI-powered robotics and automation systems is accelerating, and the workers displaced by these systems are not always finding new employment in the AI industry itself.
The Government’s Dilemma: Promoting AI While Managing Displacement
The surge in public concern about AI and jobs creates a genuine dilemma for the Chinese government. Beijing’s “AI Plus” initiative, a centerpiece of the 15th Five-Year Plan, explicitly aims to integrate AI into every major sector of the Chinese economy by 2030. The initiative is premised on the belief that AI-driven productivity growth will generate enough economic expansion to absorb the workers displaced by automation, a bet that has historically proven correct during previous waves of technological change, but that is not guaranteed to hold in the current AI transition.
The government has responded to the growing public anxiety with a combination of reassurance and policy adjustment. Official statements have emphasized that AI will create more jobs than it destroys, and that the government is committed to ensuring that the benefits of AI are broadly shared. At the same time, there are signs that policymakers are beginning to take the displacement risk more seriously, with new initiatives focused on retraining programs, social safety net expansion, and the development of AI applications that augment rather than replace human workers.
The International Dimension: China Is Not Alone
China’s public anxiety about AI and jobs is part of a global phenomenon. In the United States, Europe, and Japan, surveys show similar patterns of growing concern about AI-driven unemployment, and governments in all of these countries are grappling with the same fundamental challenge: how to capture the economic benefits of AI while managing its distributional consequences. What makes China’s situation distinctive is the scale of the potential displacement. With a workforce of nearly 800 million people, even a modest percentage of AI-driven job losses translates into tens of millions of affected workers, and the degree to which the Chinese government has committed itself to an aggressive AI development agenda.
The shift in Chinese public sentiment documented by Sheehan is a warning signal that Beijing cannot afford to ignore. The government’s ability to maintain public support for its AI strategy will depend in large part on its ability to demonstrate that the benefits of AI are being shared broadly and that workers who are displaced by automation have real pathways to new employment. As the pace of AI deployment accelerates in the coming years, managing this challenge will become one of the most important tests of Chinese governance in the AI era.
The data also has implications for how China’s AI development strategy is perceived internationally. For years, one of the arguments made in favor of China’s state-directed approach to AI was that it allowed the government to manage the social consequences of technological change more effectively than market-driven economies. The surge in public anxiety about AI and jobs suggests that this advantage may be more limited than assumed, and that the distributional challenges of the AI transition are proving difficult to manage regardless of the political system in which they occur. How Beijing responds to this challenge over the next several years will be watched closely by governments around the world that are grappling with the same fundamental question: how do you capture the benefits of AI without bearing the full cost of its disruptions?