Beijing Approves Policy to Build a Monetized "Token Economy" Around AI Agents

On July 23 the Beijing municipal government released "Several Measures on Accelerating Intelligent-Agent-Led Development", a 10-point plan coordinated by four departments, including the Development and Reform Commission, the Economy and Information Technology Bureau, the science and technology commission, and the state-owned assets regulator. Chinese outlets describe it as the first provincial-level policy in the country dedicated specifically to AI agents.

The document is explicit about commercialization. It promotes a "token economy" and new billing models named Token-as-a-Service, Agent-as-a-Service, and Result-as-a-Service, alongside "one-person companies" run largely by agents and support for domestic inference chips. The framing treats agent inference volume, measured in tokens, as an economic base to be developed rather than a cost to be minimized. Western analysts have called it one of the first state frameworks built explicitly around an agentic economy, though the "world first" label is a characterization rather than an official claim.