BEIJING – Chinese lawmakers are championing more support for people to start businesses using artificial intelligence, a move that comes as the widening application of the technology stokes anxieties about jobs.
One-person companies, or OPCs, emerged as a talking point at China’s top parliamentary meetings in Beijing in 2026, where delegates called for more resources and better legal frameworks to boost the growing model of AI-enabled entrepreneurship.
The term refers to entire businesses run by single founders without any employees, who instead outsource tasks to AI agents that can work 24/7 and with little supervision.
For example, app creators are reportedly using these agents to find ideas and write code, while e-commerce vendors tap them to manage online stores.
The model of solo entrepreneurship is gaining popularity in China, mirroring a global trend, as AI tools grow more capable and lower the costs of starting a business, such as through the use of open-source AI agents like OpenClaw.
Usage of the popular OpenClaw has been termed “raising lobsters” in China, a reference to its lobster-shaped logo.
“Since last year, one-person companies have been popping up in Hangzhou,” said Ms Luo Weihong, a delegate to China’s National People’s Congress (NPC), citing growing clusters of young entrepreneurs in the tech hub in eastern Zhejiang province, which is home to big names in Chinese tech such as Alibaba and DeepSeek.
One such entrepreneur is 29-year-old Zhang San, whom a local newspaper reported to have mass-produced more than 120 apps in five months with the help of an “assembly line” of AI agents.
The Hangzhou native uses these agents to scour the internet for specific, unfilled needs that some people may have, then gets AI to code apps that meet these demands, according to local outlet Dushi Kuaibao.
The ideas that AI generated for him include an app to monitor water consumption in water-scarce parts of Spain.
Ms Luo, a vice-chairwoman at the Hangzhou Municipal People’s Congress Standing Committee, has proposed more help for these one-person firms, such as subsidised AI tools and access to public data resources, building on the experience of cities like hers.
In her view, supporting OPCs is “one way to solve the employment problem”, she told The Straits Times in an interview.
“In the AI era, instead of having students search for traditional jobs and get anxious when they can’t find suitable ones, isn’t it better to encourage them to innovate and start businesses?” she said.
A record 12.7 million graduates will join China’s workforce in 2026, adding pressure to an already difficult jobs market.
It is not clear how the country’s job openings might be affected by AI, though a September 2025 survey by Tencent Research Institute found that some 40 per cent of respondents were worried about being replaced by the technology.
At China’s parliamentary meetings in 2026, also known as Two Sessions, a major theme was embedding AI through the economy to fuel tech-driven growth.
Officials are gunning for the value added by digital economy industries to reach 12.5 per cent of gross domestic product by 2030, up from 10.5 per cent in 2025.
Yet, AI has also fuelled fears, as in other countries, of job displacement. On the sidelines of the annual meetings, China’s Human Resources and Social Security Minister Wang Xiaoping told reporters that stabilising employment was a key priority for Beijing, which was studying how AI could be used to create new jobs and upgrade traditional ones.
Mr Zhong Bo, a delegate to the NPC from Sichuan province, proposed establishing co-working spaces and innovation communities for OPCs, which offer computing power and services like tax and legal consulting, local media reported. He also mooted a system of credit evaluation tailored to OPCs to improve their access to financing.
Meanwhile, Mr Wang Xiaofan, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference from Shanghai, suggested regional coordination among existing OPC communities that would enable entrepreneurs to transition between locations.
In recent months, China’s tech hubs from Beijing and Shanghai to Shenzhen and Hangzhou have raced to roll out plans supporting solo entrepreneurs and incubating their AI-assisted ventures. These include perks such as free office space and subsidies on AI tools.
Some local governments, including districts in Hefei, Wuxi and Shenzhen, are also embracing the use of OpenClaw, created in November 2025 by an Austrian developer and seen as a way to boost OPCs.
OpenClaw has gone viral in China, even as the authorities in Beijing flag risks such as security breaches or data loss. Almost a thousand people queued outside Tencent’s office in Shenzhen last week for free OpenClaw installations on their computers.
Shenzhen’s Longgang district, for example, recently issued draft measures encouraging companies to provide free deployments of OpenClaw and offering up to 10 million yuan (S$1.9 million) of equity investments into innovative OPC projects that prioritise young entrepreneurs.
“The OpenClaw fever has helped spawn solo ventures in areas such as e-commerce and digital content creation,” said labour economist Liu Erduo of Renmin University in Beijing.
But while OPCs have increasingly become a trend, he urged against viewing it as a silver bullet for employment.
“Not everyone can pull it off,” he said, highlighting that aspiring solo entrepreneurs require not just some degree of tech skills but also a market for the products or services they intend to sell.
In Hangzhou, at least one such founder would appear to agree. Mr Ran Wei, who developed a service platform for fellow OPC entrepreneurs, told local outlet Dushi Kuaibao that the business model was merely a first step and was better suited to people who were highly self-motivated and able to learn.
“From my personal experience, ‘becoming an OPC’ is straightforward, but ‘succeeding as an OPC’ is challenging,” he said.
ANN/The Straits Times
