With China's push to expand the "AI Plus" initiative, experts and business executives expect the country's artificial intelligence market to expand rapidly over the next few years.

Wu Lianfeng, vice-president and chief analyst of International Data Corp China, said the Chinese AI market is expected to surpass $200 billion by 2029, up from some $63.1 billion at the end of 2025.

This year's Government Work Report, passed earlier this month by China's top legislature in Beijing, promised that "We will advance and expand the 'AI Plus' initiative."

Though AI development has run into some problems during the past few years, its overall development system has been perfected since late 2025 and early 2026, said Robert Xu, chairman and CEO of Kingdee International, a globally renowned software company that was established in 1993 and is listed in Hong Kong, serving over 7.4 million customers worldwide.

"This has made developing intelligent agents much easier," said Xu, noting that these agents can help companies and individuals do a lot of work in a faster and more precise manner.

In 2025, China's hardware infrastructure supporting cloud, intelligent agents, servers and storage networks was worth some $140 billion, and by 2029, these could hit nearly $300 billion, accounting for 15.1 percent of the total information and communication technology market in China, projected Muhammad Hamayun, a Pakistani scholar.

"I think the essence of AI does not lie in advanced AI technologies, but in people using the AI technologies," Xu said, adding that the extension of AI technologies leads to the fast development of intelligent agents.

In this big ecosystem, there are many new opportunities for software as a service, which needs to be transformed from its current system into that of an agent-enabled SaaS system, said Hamayun from the Multimedia University in Malaysia.

Speaking in Hong Kong on Wednesday to announce Kingdee's 2025 annual report, Xu said in this process, related Chinese enterprises could expand their global footprint as companies around the world need AI to boost efficiency and corporate governance.

Citing Kingdee's success during the year, Xu said it had signed contracts with 463 high-quality overseas enterprises in 2025, building local service networks in Qatar, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Its clients include leading companies such as Chin Hin Group Berhad, Skywin Energy, and PT Merdeka, Xu said.

The global SaaS market is expected to witness an average annual growth rate of 14.6 percent in the next five years, surpassing $700 billion by 2029 — rising from $300 billion in 2024, Wu said.

The Chinese market is also forecast to expand at an average annual rate of 17.3 percent over the next five years, he said, adding that SaaS will undergo a profound AI evolution.

"This is a most exciting era of enterprise software," said Xu, while disclosing that Kingdee International reported revenue of approximately 7.006 billion yuan ($1.01 billion) in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 12 percent.

The profit attributable to owners of the company was around 92.914 million yuan, which turned losses into profits year-on-year, Xu said.

Mohamed Noureldin, an Egyptian scholar who completed his master's program, doctor's degree and post-doctoral research at the University of Science and Technology of China, forecasts that the number of active intelligent agents in China is to increase from around 5 million in 2026 to approximately 350 million in 2031.

"In the AI era, enterprises need to finish an AI transformation to better navigate their businesses and corporate governance," Noureldin said.

By actively responding to the "AI Plus" drive, Kingdee released its Kingdee AI Suite on March 11 in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, providing large enterprises with three core services — comprehensive coverage across all domains and scenarios; live AI; and globalization — and helping them embark on a journey to the new AI world.

yinmingyue@chinadaily.com.cn