Director of the National Data Administration: China's daily token usage has increased more than a thousandfold in two years, exceeding 140 trillion yuan.

According to a report by the Shanghai Securities News, Liu Liehong, Director of the National Bureau of Data Science and Technology, stated at the China Development Forum 2026 that China's daily token usage has exceeded 140 trillion yuan this year, a more than 1,000-fold increase from 100 billion yuan at the beginning of 2024. Liu pointed out that tokens are the smallest unit for processing information in large-scale models, possessing the characteristics of being measurable, priced, and tradable. A new value system is rapidly forming around the use, distribution, and settlement of tokens, becoming an important path for the monetization of the artificial intelligence industry. He also stated that with the deepening of China's market-oriented reform of data element allocation, a virtuous cycle of "data supply—value release" has begun to emerge.