Jiangxi Digital Human Timeline

In February 2016, Nanchang announced the creation of the China (Nanchang) Virtual Reality VR Industry Base (中国（南昌）虚拟现实VR产业基地) in Honggutan New District, establishing what was recognized as the world's first city-level VR industrial base. The initiative launched under an ambitious development strategy targeting ten thousand industry professionals, a one-billion-yuan angel fund, a ten-billion-yuan industry investment fund, more than one thousand enterprises, and output value exceeding one hundred billion yuan. By August 2016, Nanchang had issued China's first local VR support policy, and in 2017 the province produced the country's first VR industry alliance group standard, giving Jiangxi an early institutional advantage that would later provide the policy infrastructure for its digital human sector.

The VR base began attracting national and international attention in October 2018, when Nanchang hosted the inaugural World VR Industry Conference. Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter, and among the attendees were Jack Ma, Huawei's Guo Ping, and senior representatives from Microsoft, Sony, and Qualcomm. The conference secured 157 signed projects worth 63.15 billion yuan, and Jiangxi simultaneously released China's first provincial-level VR development measures. No dedicated digital human showcase was documented at this first conference, but the concentration of hardware manufacturers, content studios, government capital, and engineering talent it generated established the technical foundation from which virtual character applications would later grow.

The first hints of humanlike virtual character work emerged at the second World VR Industry Conference in October 2019, where a virtual host appeared at the opening ceremony for the first time in the province's conference history. The unnamed avatar was a modest debut, but it marked the first public use of a humanlike virtual figure at a major Jiangxi-hosted event. At the same conference, Beijing Institute of Technology's VR Center at the Nanchang base installed a ball-shaped motion capture installation specifically designed to produce virtual individuals, representing the first avatar-creation infrastructure physically situated within Jiangxi. The province's VR output had surged from 4.2 billion yuan in 2018 to 12 billion yuan in 2019, demonstrating the scale of investment underpinning these early experiments.

The institutional backbone for later digital human deployments took shape across 2019 and 2020. Cloud on (Jiangxi) Big Data Development Co., Ltd. (云上（江西）大数据发展有限公司) was registered in July 2019, co-invested by Jiangxi Provincial Entrepreneurship Investment Management Co. and Jiangxi Provincial Railway Investment Group with five hundred million yuan in registered capital, and became fully operational in January 2020. The company operated under a model spanning government cloud services, system construction, big data development, digital economy cooperation, and research, and would later be absorbed into the newly established Jiangxi Provincial Digital Industry Group in May 2024. In March 2020, Digital Jiangxi Technology Co., Ltd. (数字江西科技有限公司) was founded as a state-controlled joint venture between Cloud on (Jiangxi) and Ant Group (蚂蚁集团), managed by the Jiangxi Provincial Information Center. Digital Jiangxi became the authorized operator of the Ganfutong (赣服通) provincial mobile government services platform, which by 2020 had accumulated over 22.7 million registered users and hosted China's first provincial-level blockchain-plus-government-services platform. This partnership — a state infrastructure company joined with one of China's largest fintech groups, running a government super-app serving tens of millions of citizens — would become the delivery architecture for Jiangxi's most prominent public-facing digital human deployments.

Jiangxi's first named, publicly operational digital human arrived in January 2021, when Jiangxi Broadcasting Television launched the AI virtual anchor "Xiaoyan" (小燕) during the provincial Two Sessions. Developed using real-person AI modeling technology from Xinhua Zhiyun (新华智云), Xiaoyan was described as the first virtual anchor at the Jiangxi Two Sessions and represented the province's inaugural entry into media-facing synthetic character deployment. Later that year, in October 2021, the fourth World VR Industry Conference brought the debut of virtual host "Jiang Xiaowei" (江小薇), a full-stage digital human constructed using optical motion capture, three-dimensional modeling, and AI technology with physically simulated hair and clothing. She emerged from a naked-eye three-dimensional display to interact with live hosts on stage in real time, and the organizers designated her as version 1.0 of a character intended for annual iteration. Jiang Xiaowei established what became a recurring annual cycle at the Nanchang conferences, each edition upgrading her capabilities and prompting Jiangxi-based companies to present their own digital human work alongside her.

In February 2022, Nanchang announced the Nanchang Metaverse Trial Zone at Jiulong Lake, positioning the project as a bid to fire the first shot of metaverse development nationwide, with planned investment of five hundred billion yuan across 9.14 square kilometers. The announcement signaled that provincial leadership was prepared to treat synthetic and immersive digital environments as a strategic priority extending well beyond VR hardware. In August 2022, Jiangxi Satellite TV launched "Jiang Xiaoyou" (江小佑), a full-screen AI sign language digital human weather anchor that converted broadcast scripts into sign language sequences with dynamically adaptive facial expressions. Jiang Xiaoyou formed part of Jiangxi's meteorological AI barrier-free service system for hearing-impaired citizens, making it one of the province's first digital human deployments oriented explicitly toward accessibility.

By late 2022, an online version of the government affairs digital human "Xiao Ganshi" (小赣事) had quietly gone live, prefiguring a more prominent physical terminal launch that would follow in early 2023. Around the same period, Little Walnut Technology (南昌市小核桃科技有限公司), a Nanchang-based company founded in 2015 at the VR base, was confirmed as actively developing digital virtual human characters. Its character "Hong Xiaowei" (洪晓薇) was donated to the Jiangxi VR Industry Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance, and the company was recognized among Jiangxi's third batch of VR application demonstration projects.

In November 2022, the World VR Industry Conference returned for its fifth edition, bringing two developments of direct relevance to digital humans. Jiang Xiaowei appeared in an upgraded form that used real-time motion capture via a single camera to clone a live host's actions and micro-expressions, advancing significantly beyond the optical capture approach of the prior year. At the same event, the National Virtual Reality Innovation Center (国家虚拟现实创新中心) was formally unveiled as China's only national-level manufacturing innovation center in VR, led by Nanchang VR Research Institute (南昌虚拟现实研究院), which had accumulated more than seventy invention patents. The institute's designation represented formal national recognition of Jiangxi's technical capabilities and provided an institutional anchor for the province's ongoing digital human research. Also confirmed operational by November 2022, the digital guide "Yingying" (迎迎) at Nanchang West Railway Station allowed users to access real-time navigation through the station via a WeChat mini-program, with the digital human calculating optimal routes across floors and directing passengers to bus stops, metro connections, and ride-hailing pickup points — one of the province's first transport-sector virtual character deployments.

In February 2023, the physical self-service terminal version of Xiao Ganshi made its public debut at Honggutan District Government Affairs Service Center, launching at a provincial government affairs work exchange meeting. Jointly developed by Honggutan District Government Data Bureau, Digital Jiangxi Technology, and Inspur (浪潮), it was described as China's first government affairs digital human self-service all-in-one terminal, a claim scoped specifically to the self-service terminal form factor. Its combination of multimodal interaction with a service platform already used by tens of millions of residents made it the most prominent public-facing Jiangxi digital human to that point.

Around May 2023, a virtual digital human representing the Tang Dynasty poet Wang Bo (王勃) launched at Tengwang Pavilion (滕王阁), one of Jiangxi's most celebrated historical landmarks in Nanchang. Deployed initially as a Smart Recitation Pavilion (智能背序亭), the system invited visitors to recite the famous "Preface to the Prince of Teng's Pavilion" with the virtual Wang Bo acting as digital examiner. The installation was Jiangxi's first high-profile tourism digital human and demonstrated how the province was beginning to adapt synthetic characters to cultural heritage environments.

In July 2023, the Jiangxi provincial government published the Jiangxi Metaverse Industry Development Guidance Opinion, setting a target of two hundred billion yuan in metaverse industry output by 2027. The Jiangxi Future Industry Development Plan covering 2023 to 2035 was also issued during this period, explicitly naming digital virtual humans alongside digital content creation, city information modeling, and digital twins as development priorities under its metaverse provisions. These documents represented the first time provincial-level Jiangxi policy had formally identified digital virtual humans as a named sectoral target.

Around October 2023, the annual World VR Industry Conference convened again in Nanchang, at which a large-format three-dimensional LED screen by Unilumin (洲明科技) was featured as part of the conference's digital human display infrastructure. Tuoshi Technology Group (拓世科技集团), a Nanchang-based National High-Tech Enterprise with research and development centers in Beijing, Shenzhen, and Wuhan, was by this period active in AI digital human livestreaming, AIGC large model applications, and digital immortality technology, areas aligned with the directions the conference was showcasing. Jiangxi Kejun Industrial (江西科骏实业), known internationally as KmaxXR, was meanwhile applying avatar and simulation technologies within VR education programs, adding an institutional dimension to the province's growing portfolio of digital human applications.

In February 2024, "Xiaoshimei" (小师妹) launched at Longhu Mountain Scenic Area in Yingtan during Spring Festival, appearing on the scenic area's WeChat Video livestream channel to provide visitor information, travel tips, and interactive question-and-answer responses through a large knowledge base. Her arrival made Longhu Mountain the province's second significant tourism digital human deployment within twelve months, confirming a pattern of applying synthetic characters at Jiangxi cultural sites. In June 2024, Nanchang's High-Tech Zone deployed an AI digital human recruitment platform, extending the province's government-service digital human model into public employment services. By July 2024, the Wang Bo AI Guide System at Tengwang Pavilion — upgraded from the original Smart Recitation Pavilion format — had served 107,701 visitors and triggered 674,449 automatic commentary interactions. China Mobile (Jiangxi) VR Technology (中移（江西）虚拟现实科技有限公司), operating from Honggutan, had by this period assembled a portfolio that included virtual person video ringtones with over 860,000 users, a Digital Life Memorial Hall service, and AI digital human employee deployments in enterprise contexts.

By October 2024, Nanchang had established six AI livestreaming rooms, reflecting rapid commercialization of synthetic character deployment in the provincial capital. In November 2024, the medical insurance variant of Xiao Ganshi officially launched in Nanchang — a system distinct from the earlier government affairs terminal despite sharing the same brand and visual identity. Operated by the Jiangxi Provincial Medical Insurance Bureau rather than by Digital Jiangxi Technology and Honggutan District, this version served a separate domain, offering 24-hour multimodal consultation on medical insurance matters. In late 2024, Ganzhou's housing provident fund authority deployed "Qian Xiaojin" (虔小金), confirmed by People's Daily Jiangxi coverage as the first housing provident fund digital human intelligent customer service in the province, available continuously for multimodal consultation on provident fund matters. The arrival of Qian Xiaojin meant that by the end of 2024, Jiangxi's government-service digital human deployments extended from the provincial capital to the southern city of Ganzhou, spanning government affairs, medical insurance, and housing finance.

In 2025, AllBright Law Offices (锦天城律师事务所), one of China's largest law firms with a confirmed Nanchang branch, debuted two legal services digital humans named "Jintian" (锦天) and "Jinli" (锦丽). Their launch was described as scenario implementation with IP confirmation, representing the first documented use of named digital human characters in a professional legal services context within the province. In March 2025, Jiangxi Engineering College confirmed a deployment of digital human technology in ideological-political education courses, integrating digital human teaching, case study methods, AI assistance, and online assessment into a single instructional framework. By July 2025, the college had announced a more technically ambitious AI teaching assistant platform featuring teacher clone digital humans, powered by twenty-four Nvidia servers delivering 64 petaflops of compute and running a locally deployed DeepSeek large language model, making it the most technically specified educational digital human deployment documented in Jiangxi to that date.

In June 2025, Legal Daily reported on a fraud case in which a 65-year-old Jiangxi resident was deceived by AI-synthesized videos depicting a celebrity and attempted to secure a two-million-yuan bank loan as a result. The case became one of the province's most prominent public illustrations of the risks accompanying synthetic media, arising in a provincial context where government and commercial digital human deployment had been growing steadily since 2021.

In October 2025, the World VR Industry Conference convened in Nanchang for its annual edition, themed around VR and AI opening a digital-intelligent future and hosted for the first time solely by Jiangxi Province rather than jointly with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. At the accompanying VR and AR Industry Expo, BlueFocus Group (蓝色光标集团) and China Mobile VR Center jointly presented a 500-square-meter large-space VR experience titled "A Millennium in One Preface" (千年一序滕王阁), built around Tengwang Pavilion and featuring the virtual Wang Bo character. The collaboration brought together a national digital marketing conglomerate with the province's primary telecommunications digital human operator, extending a character first deployed in May 2023 into a full-scale immersive commercial production. Also by October 2025, the Nanchang employment services platform "Hongcheng Employment Link" (洪城就业通) had integrated an AI digital human capable of 24-hour question-and-answer interaction with jobseekers, extending the province's government-service digital human model into workforce management.

In December 2025, the Jiangxi provincial government issued the Jiangxi Province "AI+" Action Plan, published on December 18, 2025. The plan explicitly directed further development of the Xiao Ganshi intelligent agent for deployment across the Ganfutong, Ganqitong (赣企通), and Ganzhentong (赣诊通) service channels, while a separate provision promoted the integration of AI, digital humans, and other new technologies into provincial education. Targeting five thousand petaflops of intelligent computing capacity by 2030, the plan framed digital humans not as an experimental novelty but as a mandated component of Jiangxi's public digital infrastructure — the most unambiguous formal commitment the province had made to the sector since Jiang Xiaowei first stepped from a screen onto a Nanchang conference stage four years earlier.

[Mar 2026]