China's National Development and Reform Commission said on November 3 that it will accelerate work on a comprehensive AI law and impose safety standards covering the full life cycle of artificial intelligence, from development through deployment2,4.
Wang Ruomeng, deputy director-general of the NDRC's Department of Innovation and High-Tech Development, said at a November 3 news conference that China would draw on its experience governing AI to develop foundational legislation establishing the pillars of an AI legal and regulatory system. The planned rules would expand governance over the technology's core inputs and key applications.
The NDRC said China will push AI developers and operators to disclose safety risks and report safety incidents and vulnerabilities. Bloomberg reported that the rules would reach developers including DeepSeek, Moonshot, and Alibaba. The standards are framed as a response to global security incidents, though the specific incidents were not detailed in the available sources1,3.
Wang said China will legislate on data, computing power, and algorithms, as well as on key application scenarios. The NDRC also said it will set ethical guidelines alongside the safety standards.
To ease compliance, Wang said regulators will set reasonable transition periods, offer sector-specific compliance guidance, and build evaluation, consulting, and certification services to cut firms' compliance costs. China will also support AI regulatory sandboxes for different sectors, with rules governing how companies apply, test, use, and exit them.
Wang said China will monitor AI's effect on the employment structure, strengthen early warning on job displacement, and link social insurance to changes in how people work.
The announcement builds on an accelerating cadence of technical guidance. TC260, the national cybersecurity standards committee, released version 3.0 of its AI Safety Governance Framework on September 14, 2026, 24 months after version 1.0.
ANALYSIS The disclosure and incident-reporting obligations mark a shift from guidance to enforceable duty for China's domestic model makers, layering mandatory reporting atop the existing framework of voluntary standards and interim measures.