China is preparing a new export field. It's not goods sent by ship and container, but AI tokens that run through data cables.
According to a report by China Daily quoted on Thursday, June 4, Shantou in Guangdong Province in April completed China's first city-level closed verification for token exports. The process includes offshore data centers, token creation, API requests from abroad, to cross-border data delivery that is in accordance with regulations.
Tokens in AI are small units of data processed by artificial intelligence models. Their shape can be pieces of words, numbers, or parts of images. Meanwhile, the API is a digital connection path that allows applications or users abroad to access AI services running on Chinese servers.
In this model, electricity is still used in China. Servers remain in China. The AI model runs on Chinese computing centers. What is sent abroad is the result of services, such as texts, corrected images, program code, or customer service answers.
The ambition is that China wants to turn electricity, data centers, and large language model capabilities into high-value export products.
Illustration of the AI token ecosystem that is the mainstay of China's new digital services exports, supported by data centers, computing power, and artificial intelligence infrastructure. Illustration: Ma Xuejing/China Daily.
Liu Xiaoge of the Development Research Center of the State Council called the export of tokens a new form of digital service trade.
"Token exports have become a deep integration between artificial intelligence technology and digital commerce in China. This is a new form of digital service trade," said Liu, quoted by China Daily.
According to Liu, this model can help China reduce the risk of traditional trade friction when goods exports face tariff and geopolitical pressures.
In the past, global computing expansion usually meant building data centers overseas, installing cables, finding local electricity, and operating networks in foreign markets. Token exports offer another path. Computing power does not leave China, but its value can still be sold to global markets.
Shantou has an important asset. The port city has an international submarine cable landing station that is directly connected to Southeast Asia, including a low-latency line to Singapore. Low latency means faster network response times.
Shantou is also close to offshore wind energy sources. This adds value as global clients pay more attention to environmental, social, and governance standards or ESG.
In Qingyang, Gansu Province, a similar pattern is beginning to take shape. Wind energy and solar panels in northwest China are not only sent to distant industrial cities. Some can be used directly by local data centers.
Green electricity goes into the server. The GPU processes the computation. The AI model generates tokens. Users in other countries receive the results as a digital service.
Qingyang is said to have built 11 data centers, formed a 10,000-card computing cluster, and surpassed a computing scale of 140,000 petaflops.
In the old export economy, cities needed factories. In the token economy, cities need electricity, fiber-optic cables, servers, clear rules, and low-latency services.
Beijing Academy of Social Sciences researcher Wang Peng said that token exports reflect China's combined advantages in energy, data, infrastructure, and engineering. According to him, this model can expand China's trade competitiveness into the field of intelligent computing.
China Daily reported that global AI spending is soaring. Gartner estimates that global AI spending will reach 2.52 trillion US dollars by 2026, up 44 percent from 2025. Spending on AI infrastructure alone is expected to rise from around 965 billion US dollars in 2025 to 1.37 trillion US dollars in 2026.
The demand is starting to show up in developer behavior. OpenRouter, a global AI model API aggregator platform, notes that China-made open source models rose from a small share at the end of 2024 to nearly 30 percent of weekly token volume in some weeks of 2025.
Names such as DeepSeek, Qwen, MiniMax, and Moonshot AI are starting to gain ground. In early 2026, calls for Chinese model tokens continued to increase. For the first time, the use of Chinese model tokens is said to surpass that of competitors from the United States.
Chinese companies are starting to move. China Telecom offers an AI token package starting at 9.9 yuan or about 1.46 US dollars per month for 10 million tokens. For small businesses and developers, there are packages of up to 150 million tokens per month at a price of 39.9 yuan.
Alibaba also formed the Alibaba Token Hub. The company calls the token a strategic asset with three main tasks, namely creating tokens, sending tokens, and implementing tokens.
Alibaba said it would invest more than 380 billion yuan in three years to build a global cloud computing network. The investment will support token exports through model capabilities, computing power, and chips.
This model places tokens as a new digital service product, with data centers, energy, chips, and cross-border rules as its main foundation.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
