This report describes how the “Digital Human Development Promotion Forum” held on the morning of July 20, 2023, as a sub-forum of the China Internet Conference (中国互联网大会) organized by the China Internet Association (中国互联网协会), framed digital humans as a near-term industrialization topic rather than a purely experimental media novelty, with an explicit emphasis on building an ecosystem that can move from demonstrations to sustained deployment in vertical domains such as media and public-facing services; opening remarks by Chen Jiachun (陈家春) positioned large-model momentum as an accelerant for virtual digital person systems and argued that digital humans could become a representative human–machine interaction interface for the internet era, while also stressing that progress depends on coordinated participation across the full supply chain rather than isolated product launches, and a video address from Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (工业和信息化部) science-and-technology leadership, Ren Aiguang (任爱光), reinforced the policy-adjacent tone of the event.
The forum’s core thesis, developed in a keynote by Wu Suoning (武锁宁), was a staged evolution model in which digital humans began as “media people” (anchors, hosts, presenters), are now entering an “upgrade/iteration plus service expansion” phase, and are expected to extend toward “intelligent service people” and later penetrate as “industry people” and “industrial people,” implying a shift from front-end representation to domain work roles that depend on knowledge resources, operational integration, and governance, not only visual realism; this framing structured three thematic tracks—media digital humans, service digital humans, and enabling technologies—introduced by senior speakers from China Search Information Technology Co., Ltd. (中国搜索信息科技股份有限公司), Unicom Online Information Technology Co., Ltd. (联通在线科技有限公司), and China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (中国信息通信研究院), with the media track emphasizing immersive and interactive experience design (including human–machine interaction techniques and XR-style presentation modes) as the next step beyond “virtual host” novelty, the service track arguing that digital humans can raise service quality and precision of information delivery when embedded into real workflows, and the technology track describing digital humans as an interaction “carrier” whose modeling, driving, and rendering advances both improve experience and are in turn pushed forward by expanding application requirements.
Across practitioner sharing, Migu Culture Technology Co., Ltd. (咪咕文化科技有限公司) described batch production and operational pipelines for multi-domain deployments (sports, music, news, marketing) and treated 3D and interactivity as the direction of travel, zhibo.tv (中国体育) highlighted that sports-facing digital hosts and explainers depend materially on domain knowledge bases and corpora to be credible and useful, Xinhuanet Co., Ltd. (新华网股份有限公司) stressed the combination of content, technology, aesthetics, and “digital asset management” to make digital humans sustainable as reusable production assets rather than one-off characters, 263 Group (263集团) emphasized real-time 3D rendering engines enabling virtual live broadcast use cases for conferences and marketing as well as experiments with virtual endorsers, and Beijing Fenghuo Wanjia Technology Co., Ltd. (北京烽火万家科技有限公司) argued that scale adoption is constrained by cost, ease of use, and interaction intelligence—leading to productized forms such as digital-human business cards, small-sample digital humans, and “intelligent secretary” services tied to industries including telecommunications and counseling; enabling-side vendors Beijing Yuanjing Digital Technology Co., Ltd. (北京元境数字科技有限公司) and Weiwu (Hangzhou) Technology Co., Ltd. (唯物(杭州)科技有限公司) presented platform-and-tool approaches spanning live commerce, culture and tourism, entertainment, education, finance, and government services, with an explicit message that consumer-grade uptake requires high perceived quality paired with a low barrier to creation and operation, increasingly supported by AIGC workflows and application-engine style integration.
Institutionally, the forum’s main outcome was the launch of the “China Digital Human Navigation Plan” (中国数字人领航计划), initiated by the association together with eight organizations—China Search Information Technology Co., Ltd., Xinhuanet Co., Ltd., Unicom Online Information Technology Co., Ltd., 263 Group, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Migu Culture Technology Co., Ltd., China Telecom Sichuan Company (中国电信四川公司), and Beijing Fenghuo Wanjia Technology Co., Ltd.—with a multi-tier structure (initiators, co-initiators, partners) and an application-led agenda intended to drive standards, industry exchange, coordination, scenario enablement, and talent development while supporting policy implementation and industrial incubation; the plan’s first cohort of 30 partner organizations was formally recognized (including CCTV (央视网), China News Service (中新网), China Youth Net (中青网), Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (北京邮电大学), China Telecom Research Institute (中国电信研究院), Tencent (腾讯), Cheetah Mobile (北京猎豹移动), U-Chain Era (优链时代), and Weiwu (Hangzhou) Technology Co., Ltd.), signaling that “digital human” development was being treated as a coordinated, cross-sector program rather than a set of unrelated pilots; in parallel, the forum showcased the 2023 solicitation and release of “typical scenario application cases” through the “Second Digital Human Boutique Show” (第二届数字人精品秀), categorizing 30 selected works into simulation-type, function-type, and intelligence-type digital humans, and it announced an intention to plan a first “China Digital Human Conference” (中国数字人大会) in 2024, reinforcing the overall narrative that the field’s immediate challenges are not only realism and rendering quality but also reproducible production pipelines, domain knowledge grounding, asset governance, operational cost reduction, and ecosystem-level coordination that can support deployment at scale in media, services, and other regulated or high-trust contexts.
China Digital Human Leading Plan (中国数字人领航计划)
China Digital Human Leading Plan (中国数字人领航计划) is described as an industry coordination and mobilization program led by China Internet Association to convene upstream and downstream participants across the digital human industry chain and to build an industry ecosystem organized around “collaborative innovation, application promotion, ecosystem clustering, and talent cultivation.” The plan is presented as a structured platform rather than a single event: it is positioned as a continuing mechanism for convening partners, aligning priorities, and accelerating practical deployment of digital human capabilities through coordinated activity design, shared agendas, and repeated convenings anchored to industry events.
The plan’s governance and participation model is depicted as a multi-level linkage structure that distinguishes between plan initiating units, joint initiating units, and partner units. The material frames the initiator role as setting direction and convening power, the joint initiator role as being held by organizations with comparatively strong digital human R&D capacity and comparatively rich application practice, and the partner role as broad participation across the ecosystem. This tiered structure is presented as a way to move beyond loose “industry alliance” signaling toward a repeatable operating model that can recruit, recognize, and coordinate contributors while maintaining a clear organizational spine for decision-making and activity scheduling.
The plan’s work is described as organized around a set of recurring dimensions that function as a de facto program architecture. The cited descriptions emphasize activity and capability building across strategic alignment, technical development, application implementation, safety/security assurance, and talent development, with the intent that these dimensions together support what is described as the healthy development of the digital human industry. Within this framing, “application” is not treated as an afterthought; it is repeatedly presented as a leading driver, with “scenario application as traction” used to guide priorities such as standards, implementation pathways, and ecosystem formation.
Several source items describe the plan as both a recruitment vehicle and an activity platform. In 2023, the plan is shown as having a formal “call for partners” phase that defines the plan, names it explicitly, and positions participation as joining an ecosystem-building effort. In parallel, the plan is associated with early cohort formation and public reporting on initial membership, including references to a first cohort of 30 units joining and the launch of subsequent recruitment. The effect of these signals, taken together, is that the plan is not merely a label applied retroactively; it is presented as a continuing program that recruits participants in batches and uses those batches to scale its collaborative agenda.
The sources also connect the plan to the establishment of a year-round “normalized” activity mechanism anchored to a China Digital Human Conference, implying that the plan functions as the operating platform that persists between conference moments. In this construction, the conference acts as an annual or marquee convening point, while the plan provides continuity across the year through seminars, themed forums, and other convenings that can be organized by or in coordination with government agencies, technology parks, enterprises, research institutes, and universities. This positioning matters for interpretation: it suggests the plan is intended to be an ecosystem governance layer that can run repeated, structured interactions rather than a one-off industry campaign.
The plan’s operational emphasis on practical deployment appears in the repeated coupling of “technology” with “application landing” and with standards and safety. The materials describe program work that catalyzes technical innovation while also pushing application implementation, developing standards and specifications, strengthening safety assurances, and building talent support. Read together, these elements depict an attempt to manage typical industry scaling constraints in parallel: speeding up technical progress, reducing adoption friction via repeatable use cases, improving interoperability and quality via standards, reducing risk via safety framing, and addressing workforce constraints via talent mechanisms.
Finally, the sources illustrate the plan’s ecosystem strategy through examples of organizations reporting participation or association with plan-related events. These examples are not, by themselves, a complete membership roster, but they do show how the plan is used as a recognizable umbrella across different parts of the industry, including major platforms and service providers, conference-linked activities, and “AI + digital human” seminars. Examples named in the sources include Cheetah Mobile and 263 Group, and references to participation and reporting by organizations such as XinhuaNet and China Search Information Technology Co., Ltd.. In aggregate, these items reinforce that the plan is treated as a cross-organizational coordination mechanism intended to scale a shared industrial agenda across technology capability, deployment practice, governance expectations, and human capital development.
China Digital Human Navigation Plan Officially Launches, Welcomes First Batch of 30 Partners at 22nd China Internet Conference
BroadVision Share Co., Ltd. (百望股份有限公司)
Beijing Red Cotton Xiaoice Technology Co., Ltd. (北京红棉小冰科技有限公司)
Beijing Cheetah Mobile Technology Co., Ltd. (北京猎豹移动科技有限公司)
Beijing Orion Star Technology Co., Ltd. (北京猎户星空科技有限公司)
Beijing Qingbo Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (北京清博智能科技有限公司)
Beijing Yuanjing Digital Technology Co., Ltd. (北京元境数字科技有限公司)
Beijing Zhongwangyi Qixiu Technology Co., Ltd. (北京中网易企秀科技有限公司)
Beijing Zhongxin Net Information Technology Co., Ltd. (北京中新网信息科技有限公司)
Changzhou Ao Valley Intelligent Control Technology Co., Ltd. (常州傲谷智控科技有限公司)
Hangzhou Moko Intelligent Interconnection Co., Ltd. (杭州摩科智能互联有限公司)
Hunan Duo Dou Le Man Entertainment Media Co., Ltd. (湖南多豆乐漫娱传媒有限公司)
"Internet World" Magazine (《互联网天地》杂志社)
Jinan Daily Newspaper Group (济南日报报业集团)
Shandong Shunwang Media Share Co., Ltd. (山东舜网传媒股份有限公司)
Shandong Future Fusion Media Co., Ltd. (山东未来融媒体有限公司)
Shanghai Chuanji Information Technology Co., Ltd. (上海传际信息技术有限公司)
Shenzhen Qianhai Hand-drawn Technology Culture Co., Ltd. (深圳市前海手绘科技文化有限公司)
Sichuan Daily Newspaper Group (四川日报社)
Tencent Cloud Computing (Beijing) Co., Ltd. (腾讯云计算（北京）有限责任公司)
Tianyu Digital Technology (Dalian) Group Co., Ltd. (天娱数字科技（大连）集团股份有限公司)
Materialism (Hangzhou) Technology Co., Ltd. (唯物(杭州)科技有限公司)
Xinchuan Online (Beijing) Information Technology Co., Ltd. (新传在线（北京）信息技术有限公司)
New National Pulse Digital Culture Share Co., Ltd. (新国脉数字文化股份有限公司)
China Telecom Share Co., Ltd. Research Institute (中国电信股份有限公司研究院)
China Youth Net New Media Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. (中青网新媒体科技（北京）有限公司)