BEIJING, 14th October, 2026 (WAM) -- China is accelerating the launch of "token factories" as artificial intelligence (AI) applications gain momentum, in a bid to build an economic system suited to the AI era.
According to Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese capital's first token factory is now in operation in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, with a daily capacity of up to 1.4 trillion tokens in its first phase.
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 -- similar to how electricity is measured in kilowatt-hours.
Beijing unveiled an action plan to accelerate the development of the token economy for 2026-2028, calling for the construction of advanced token factories and the establishment of standards for measuring productivity and energy efficiency.
Tokens serve as units of data processing in AI models, and customers can simply pay for the tokens they use instead of deploying and managing models themselves.
According to China's National Data Administration, the country's average daily token calls had surpassed 500 trillion by June.
These efforts are part of the "AI Plus" initiative, aimed at promoting AI adoption and developing the country's infrastructure and computing capabilities.