China has chosen an official Chinese name for the basic building block of the AI industry, and the name itself reflects Beijing’s view of the road ahead for artificial intelligence.
The government has chosen “ciyuan” as the Mandarin word for “token.” The term combines “ci,” which means word, with “yuan,” the base unit of China’s currency.
The name was officially announced on Monday during a speech at the 2026 China Development Forum by Liu Liehong, the head of China’s National Data Administration. People in China had been arguing over how to translate the word “token” into Chinese prior to his remarks.
Liu claims that the token acts as a value anchor for the AI era, settling disputes between what tech companies offer and what ordinary customers and enterprises need.
He said tokens provide the AI business a clear way to measure what it produces and sells.
The timing of Liu’s comments stood out as Nvidia chief Jensen Huang made a similar point at his company’s developer conference, GTC, last week. Huang told the audience that tokens are the new commodity.
He said Nvidia should no longer be seen mainly as a chip maker but as a builder of what he calls “AI factories” that produce tokens in large numbers.
Token exports on the rise
Liu claims that tokens are changing the way AI functions. A new type of economy is beginning to emerge as people use, share, and pay with them.
He explains that the AI sector now relies heavily on this mechanism for revenue. He also cited “token exports” as evidence that China is taking a more active role in this change.
Daily token usage across China has already surpassed 140 trillion this month. This is more than 1,000 times the 100 billion processed each day at the start of 2024. Additionally, compared to the 100 trillion reported at the end of the previous year, it has increased by 40%.
Liu claims that the expansion shows China’s AI sector is moving from simple chat programs to systems that can make judgments and carry out real tasks.
In just 20 days this month, some AI startups made more money than they did in 2025.
Power is turning into profit
The idea is reflected in China’s power network.
The country is the world’s largest electricity producer, and its western areas have plenty of low-cost renewable energy. China turns that energy into computing power and sells it to the world through tokens.
If it sells raw electricity, it only earns about 0.5 yuan, which is around seven cents, per kilowatt-hour. But when the same energy is used for AI work, it can create up to 22 times more value, according to industry data.
Alibaba has created a special subsidiary, the Alibaba Token Hub, to align with this perspective. The company created a special subsidiary called the Alibaba Token Hub.
The intention is to move the company’s AI efforts from models to tokens.
Large American corporations like Meta and OpenAI have begun monitoring token usage per employee and providing token allowances as a benefit of employment.
Beijing is also moving ahead with new rules.
The government wants to create one national system for data property rights and build a single national data market.
Officials have named this year the “Year of Data Element Value Release.”
By the end of 2025, China had compiled more than 100,000 high-quality datasets that add up to over 890 petabytes. This is about 310 times the digital collection of the National Library of China.
Wang Peng, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, said that tokens priced at competitive prices make AI technologies accessible to individuals in developing nations, small businesses, and lone developers who previously could not afford them.