The Chinese government aims to harness artificial intelligence (AI) in public tenders and bidding processes to protect against behind-the-scenes deals and corruption. This initiative aligns with President Xi Jinping’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign, which has sought to root out corruption in various sectors. The directives were published recently, underscoring the administration's commitment to enhance transparency and accountability within public procurement processes.

According to the guidelines released by the National Development and Reform Commission and seven other agencies, enhanced AI tools will be employed to identify irregularities in bidding documents, supervise the decisions made by review committees, and augment the human reasoning capacity required to generate recommendations. These systems are designed to seek out evidence of potential bid-rigging and are expected to relay findings to responsible authorities tasked with enforcing discipline and laws.

This policy comes in response to Xi’s call in January 2025 for an enriched toolkit to fight corruption, indicating a significant shift towards integrating technology in governance and public administration. As the country confronts longstanding issues of corruption, the deployment of AI could potentially bolster efforts to create a more transparent and fair bidding landscape in China’s public sector.