Economic Watch: China rolls out "token factories" to drive AI economy

NAMPA / Xinhua

2026-10-12

BEIJING, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- As AI applications gain momentum, China is accelerating the rollout of "token factories" in a bid to build an economic order suited to the AI era. Every time a user prompts an AI model to generate code, images or video, tokens are consumed behind the scenes. In March, China adopted "ciyuan" as the official Chinese term for "token," giving its AI services a standard unit for measuring, settling and tracking usage --......

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