Beijing E-Town unveils city's first token economy policy package

The Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, unveiled the city's first dedicated policy package for the "token economy" on Friday, offering financial incentives and other support to expand AI computing capacity and accelerate the commercial use of artificial intelligence.

Tokens are the basic units of data processed by large language models and other generative AI systems. The new policies seek to build an industrial ecosystem covering token production, distribution, and application, with support spanning chips, computing power, data, AI models, and real-world applications.

The move follows the launch of Beijing's first two token factories, the first being privately-owned and the second being State-owned. Both factories are located in E-Town. The area plans to continue developing large-scale token factories and encourage companies to expand token production.

Under the policies, E-Town will issue 100 million yuan ($14.8 million) each in computing-power vouchers and data vouchers annually. Companies working to improve AI inference efficiency can receive subsidies covering 30 percent of computing-power rental costs, capped at 20 million yuan.

The policies also aim to create a unified platform capable of connecting different AI models, modalities and computing platforms, allowing users to access multiple models and settle token usage through a single system. Operators providing such integrated services can receive up to 50 million yuan in financial support.

On the application side, E-Town will encourage government agencies and businesses to open up real-world scenarios, particularly in sectors including commercial aerospace and automobile manufacturing, to increase the large-scale use of AI models and tokens.

The policies also provide support for One Person Companies, or OPCs, a model in which individuals use AI agents and other digital tools to operate businesses with minimal staffing.

E-Town has established Beijing's first OPC community and certified nine OPC communities, which together have more than 40,000 square meters of space and have served more than 500 OPC businesses. It aims to attract more than 5,000 OPC entities in the future.

During the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30), E-Town aims to expand the scale of its intelligent economy to more than 400 billion yuan, according to the area's information technology industry authority.