China's AI Education Experiment

a deep dive

This post originally appeared in ChinaTalk.

“Adding AI-powered smart classrooms to this environment is a recipe for dystopian scandals.”

Pilot schools in China are already using AI to grade children’s artwork, monitor their facial expressions during lectures, and screen them for psychological problems — and the Ministry of Education (MOE) wants schools across the country to follow suit.¹

Integrating AI into the education system has rapidly become a top priority of the Chinese central government, which is betting that AI tools can eliminate China’s vast educational inequities and make the next generation of workers more productive. The State Council highlighted education as a key area of focus in the “AI+” plan, it received a shout-out in the 15th Five-Year Plan, and in May 2025, the Ministry of Education (MOE) released a white paper on AI for education.² This MOE document proclaims that 2025 marks the dawn of an era (“智慧教育元年”), the beginning of a system-wide effort to “intelligentize” 智能化 education using AI tools. The MOE’s goal: universalize basic AI access in primary and secondary schools by 2030. Industry received that signal and responded rapidly, with Alibaba Cloud releasing its own AI+education white paper the following month.³ But the gap between Beijing’s (and Hangzhou’s) techno-optimism and rural China’s reality is enormous.