China Telecom Report: China's Token Use to Hit 1 Quintillion in 2026

The China Telecom Research Institute released a report on AI infrastructure in the agent era, saying China's AI industry is shifting from large models and computing power competition to large-scale agent deployment and application monetization. Token demand in China is growing explosively.

Rao Shaoyang, director of the institute's industry and enterprise strategy research department, said China's annual Token consumption is expected to reach 1 quintillion in 2026 and exceed 350 quintillion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of nearly 12 times.

In terms of computing power, the rise of agents will drive China's computing demand to keep growing fast, with an average annual increase of nearly 10 times over the next 2 to 3 years. Inference computing demand will far exceed training demand, and is expected to account for 80% of China's inference computing market by 2029.

Data shows that in 2026, AI capital expenditure by China's leading tech companies will approach 600 billion yuan, more than 10% of total social investment. International research firms predict that the number of active agents worldwide will reach nearly 80 million in 2026 and 2.216 billion by 2030.