China Report: 97.9% of Primary Pupils Have Heard of AI, but 56.4% Were Never Taught to Use It
Nearly all Chinese primary school pupils have heard of artificial intelligence, yet most are learning to use it without any instruction at school, and a sizeable share now turn to AI for emotional support rather than to people. Those are the headline findings of a report released in Beijing on September 22.
The China Youth AI Literacy Improvement Report was issued by think tank Fourth Wave and the Zhongguancun Tiancheng Innovation Research Centre at a large-model executive roundtable, drawing on 615 valid questionnaires collected from primary pupils in August, interviews with academics and case studies of education practice.
Awareness is close to universal: 97.9% said they had heard of AI, with 11.7% calling themselves well informed and 51.7% knowing something, while only 2.1% had never heard of it. Asked what counts as AI, children most often named voice assistants, learning apps and robot vacuum cleaners, and many included cartoon robots.
Usage is already mainstream. 74.8% said they had used AI in daily study, most often for chatbot Q&A, photo-based problem solving, voice assistants and content generation. Yet 56.4% said their school had never taught them how to use it, a gap the report describes as high awareness but shallow understanding.
Judgement is the weaker link. More than half agreed that what AI says is correct, and only 31.4% knew AI can produce content that is not true. Even so, 93.7% said they think a problem through before asking AI, suggesting some instinct for independent reasoning survives heavy use.
The emotional turn alarms the authors most: 46.4% said they confide in AI rather than the people around them when upset, and 21.5% said they prefer talking with AI to talking with real people, evidence that AI's role is shifting from tool toward companion at progressively younger ages.
The report names three paradoxes behind the imbalance: technology reaches children faster than education can respond, tool use replaces thinking practice, and human-machine relationships crowd out human ones. It argues literacy should mean correctly understanding and steering AI, not merely operating it skilfully.
Renmin University professor Yang Bo's three-tier model of being able to use, judge and collaborate is extended into a five-tier frame: knowing AI, using AI, discerning AI, creating with AI and acting responsibly, with the last tier covering privacy, safety, academic integrity, fairness and ethics.
Among the observed programmes is TAL's Xueersi AI Lesson for Children, which ran as a single session across more than 120 primary schools and 20,000 pupils in 2025 and was expanded in 2026 into a ten-lesson primer reaching 56 schools with over 50 university volunteer teams. TAL executive president Wei Chen framed AI as a partner for widening access rather than a substitute for teaching.
The China Youth AI Literacy Improvement Report was issued by think tank Fourth Wave and the Zhongguancun Tiancheng Innovation Research Centre at a large-model executive roundtable, drawing on 615 valid questionnaires collected from primary pupils in August, interviews with academics and case studies of education practice.
Awareness is close to universal: 97.9% said they had heard of AI, with 11.7% calling themselves well informed and 51.7% knowing something, while only 2.1% had never heard of it. Asked what counts as AI, children most often named voice assistants, learning apps and robot vacuum cleaners, and many included cartoon robots.
Usage is already mainstream. 74.8% said they had used AI in daily study, most often for chatbot Q&A, photo-based problem solving, voice assistants and content generation. Yet 56.4% said their school had never taught them how to use it, a gap the report describes as high awareness but shallow understanding.
Judgement is the weaker link. More than half agreed that what AI says is correct, and only 31.4% knew AI can produce content that is not true. Even so, 93.7% said they think a problem through before asking AI, suggesting some instinct for independent reasoning survives heavy use.
The emotional turn alarms the authors most: 46.4% said they confide in AI rather than the people around them when upset, and 21.5% said they prefer talking with AI to talking with real people, evidence that AI's role is shifting from tool toward companion at progressively younger ages.
The report names three paradoxes behind the imbalance: technology reaches children faster than education can respond, tool use replaces thinking practice, and human-machine relationships crowd out human ones. It argues literacy should mean correctly understanding and steering AI, not merely operating it skilfully.
Renmin University professor Yang Bo's three-tier model of being able to use, judge and collaborate is extended into a five-tier frame: knowing AI, using AI, discerning AI, creating with AI and acting responsibly, with the last tier covering privacy, safety, academic integrity, fairness and ethics.
Among the observed programmes is TAL's Xueersi AI Lesson for Children, which ran as a single session across more than 120 primary schools and 20,000 pupils in 2025 and was expanded in 2026 into a ten-lesson primer reaching 56 schools with over 50 university volunteer teams. TAL executive president Wei Chen framed AI as a partner for widening access rather than a substitute for teaching.
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