China issues guidelines on AI and worker protections

The guidelines organize 18 tasks across six areas.[1] Those areas include creating jobs through AI, making adoption more employment-friendly, improving workers’ digital skills, enhancing employment services, strengthening protections and monitoring employment risks.[1] The stated aim is to use AI to create jobs, improve employment quality and encourage entrepreneurship while limiting displacement.[1] The guidance therefore addresses both the potential for AI to expand work and the risk that adoption could replace existing roles.[1][2] It also calls for research into AI’s effects on employment.[1]

For labor-intensive industries, the guidelines call for careful management of the scope, intensity and pace of AI adoption.[2] Companies are encouraged to explore a buffer period for workers facing possible job losses.[2] Before large-scale deployment, they should notify affected workers and support their transition to other roles.[2] The guidelines also call for developing workers’ digital skills and employment capabilities.[2] Together, these measures place worker communication and transition support alongside decisions about adopting AI, rather than treating deployment as only a technology choice.[2]

The guidance calls for expanding employment opportunities in emerging fields, supporting small and medium-sized businesses in stabilizing or expanding employment, and developing new AI-related occupations.[1] It also proposes using AI to support employment policies and services while increasing support for workers moving into new jobs.[1] On protections, it calls for safeguarding workers’ rights in human-machine collaboration and strengthening social security for flexible and new forms of employment.[1] The guidelines also call for stronger labor protections and social security for workers.[2]

By the end of 2025, more than 30% of manufacturing enterprises with annual main business revenue of at least 20 million yuan had adopted AI.[1] New AI-related job postings in the platform’s new-economy category rose 789.47% year over year from January to July.[1] Zhaopin reported particularly strong demand for AI engineers, including in automotive manufacturing and intelligent driving.[1] These figures describe adoption and job postings; the guidelines separately call for monitoring employment risks with early warnings.[1] China’s five-year employment-first plan identified promoting employment alongside AI advances as a key task.[1]