China's State Council issues guidelines on AI's impact on employment

China's General Office of the State Council issued guidelines on adapting to AI advances to promote employment-friendly development, aiming to harness the technology to create jobs while mitigating job displacement. The guidelines were reported on October 23, 2026, the date the state outlet Xinhua published the announcement.

What it is

The guidelines are a State Council policy document aimed at adapting China's labor market to AI advances rather than a binding statute with penalties. They were issued by the General Office of the State Council and organize their requirements into 18 tasks spanning job creation, skills, services, protections and risk monitoring.

What it requires

Employers and local authorities are called on to expand employment in emerging AI-related fields and help small and medium enterprises use AI to stabilize staffing rather than cut it. The guidelines also push for an assessment mechanism covering employment risk from AI use in traditional sectors. On worker protections, they call for improving frameworks covering human-machine collaboration, social security for flexible and new forms of employment, and income distribution. They further direct ongoing monitoring and early warning of employment risk tied to AI applications, alongside continued research into AI's employment impact. The policy arrives as China's core AI industry was valued at more than 1.2 trillion yuan in 2025, with more than 6,200 AI companies operating nationwide. By the end of 2025, more than 30 percent of manufacturing enterprises with annual revenue of at least 20 million yuan had already adopted AI technologies.

What security leaders should do

Security and compliance leaders with China-based workforces should track how these employment-risk-assessment mechanisms are operationalized by local labor authorities, since they may create new reporting duties tied to AI deployment decisions. Teams running AI-driven restructuring should document how adoption decisions tie into job-creation and reskilling tasks referenced in the guidelines, to align internal change-management records with the government's employment-risk monitoring expectations. Given the guidelines' emphasis on human-machine collaboration protections and social security for new forms of employment, HR and legal functions should coordinate with security teams on data handling for any AI-enabled workforce monitoring or redeployment systems introduced to meet these tasks.