For China’s workers, artificial intelligence is no longer a distant productivity promise. It is becoming an immediate test of who can adapt before their job disappears.

The warning arrived sharply for Beijing programmer Fei Zhaojun. His boss asked whether AI could replace human coders; two weeks later, Fei and about 160 colleagues were laid off.¹ The episode has become a stark illustration of a broader shift: China is pushing AI and robotics through workplaces at speed, while workers weigh new opportunities against the risk of being automated out.

Fei, 40, had once doubted that AI could code well enough to replace people. After losing his job, his view became more pragmatic. “Mid-level coders’ job are essentially replaceable in most of the cases,” he said. “Even if it is a disaster that leads to replacing all humans, at this stage, you just have to use it as everyone else is using it.”² During a career break, he has begun making short videos while considering his next move.

The disruption is not confined to programming. Chengdu translator Du Qinchun has found temporary work training an AI translation model, even as he says industry pay has fallen by more than half from years earlier. Scriptwriter Wang Zhicheng, meanwhile, left after his employer cut roughly half its writing team and now runs an independent children’s-book studio. He argues that AI remains imperfect: “Humans are still the decision makers on which one to pick or pursue among all that AI generates.”²

The government’s AI Plus drive is accelerating that tension. Industrial firms reporting use of AI models and agents rose to 47.5% last year from 9.6% in 2024, while automation spreads from software and media to logistics and food delivery.² Analysts warn that productivity may not translate into enough new jobs, especially in an economy already marked by weak consumer confidence and elevated youth unemployment.

Yet the picture is not uniformly bleak. Beijing analyst Shujing He says there is “far less anti-AI sentiment in China” than elsewhere, with many displaced workers eager to try AI-enabled businesses.² And as China’s population ages and shrinks, automation could eventually ease a labor shortage. For now, though, workers are being asked to embrace the tool that may be remaking their livelihoods first.