His boss asked if AI could replace human coders. Two weeks later, he and 160 colleagues were laid off in Beijing

Fei Zhaojun says his boss asked whether AI could soon take over coding work. Two weeks later, he and about 160 colleagues were out of a job in Beijing. That kind of timing feels brutal, but it is also becoming ordinary in China as AI moves from a talking point to a tool that companies actually use to cut costs and reorganize work.

China is leaning hard into adoption. Government policy is pushing businesses and people to use AI apps and robotics in daily life, and the result is visible in everything from software jobs to short video production. Shujing He, a senior analyst at Plenum in Beijing, says there is far less anti-AI sentiment than in other places. People who fear replacement, or who have already left traditional jobs, are often eager to try AI-enabled ventures instead.

Fei, 40, used to doubt AI could handle programming perfectly. His bosses apparently thought it was close enough. He now makes vlog-style short videos during a career break, focused on ordinary people’s lives, though he says he is not making a living from them yet. His view is blunt: mid-level coding jobs are, in many cases, replaceable, so at this stage people just have to use AI as everyone else is using it.

The pressure is spreading well beyond programmers. In Chengdu, translator Du Qinchun says helping train an AI translation model has brought in more work, but the pay in his industry has fallen by more than half from years ago. Chinese industrial enterprises using AI models and agents jumped to 47.5% last year from 9.6% in 2024, according to IDC. In the same period, humanoid robots have started sorting parcels in postal centers on a small scale, and AI is increasingly being used in China’s short drama industry.

That shift sits on top of an economy that is already slowing. Consumer spending has been weak, in part because people worry about job security, and the housing slump has also hit household wealth. Economists warn AI could boost productivity while making employment more fragile. For China, that is the uncomfortable tradeoff: faster adoption now, and a harder labor market later.