Demand for AI talent in China outpaces other ‘new-economy’ sectors

China’s spring hiring season is revealing a sharp surge in demand for artificial intelligence talent as companies speed up the deployment of related technologies, turning it into one of the country’s hottest professional fields. The number of AI-related job postings in China in the first two months of the year grew about 12-fold year on year, far outpacing growth in other “new-economy” industries such as healthcare, renewable energy and semiconductors, People’s Daily reported on Tuesday, citing insights from a report by professional social networking platform Maimai. AI-related jobs accounted for 26.23 per cent of all new-economy job postings, up from just 2.29 per cent a year ago, Maimai said, signalling that Chinese companies were rapidly integrating AI into core business operations. Some specialised positions remain particularly hard to fill. The supply-demand ratio for high-performance computing engineers was just 0.15, meaning around seven positions were competing for each candidate. Other technical roles, including those for creators of simultaneous localisation and mapping algorithms, regulatory control algorithms and cloud computing functions, also face significant shortages. Salaries reflect the scarcity of AI talent. Online recruitment platform Zhaopin.com reported this week that AI engineers command an average monthly salary of 20,804 yuan (US$3,020), ranking highest among tech jobs – above chip engineers, mobile developers and software engineers. China’s tech giants have expanded AI recruitment. When announcing its 2026 spring campus recruitment plans on Tuesday, Chinese fintech firm Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, said more than 70 per cent of technical roles would focus directly on AI. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. Ant’s positions span AI research, applications and infrastructure, focusing on large-model algorithms, multimodal generation, data intelligence, core platform development, embodied intelligence and AI security, with job locations across the world. The boom in AI hiring is being supported by rapid adoption across Chinese society. Domestic generative AI platforms such as Doubao, Qwen and DeepSeek each report monthly active users exceeding 100 million, with the total user base surpassing 600 million nationwide, fuelling demand for technical talent and driving enterprise adoption, according to data from China Internet Network Information Center, a state-run research organisation. In a recent report, international ratings agency Moody’s estimated that generative AI could boost productivity by around 1.5 per cent a year in economies that used it. The report said that while AI might help offset labour shortages in rapidly ageing populations, it would also intensify competition for highly skilled technical professionals.