China Unicom Outlines Strategy for AI Tokens, Compute Networks, and 6G

At the 2026 China Unicom Partners Conference, Chairman Dong Xin presented the telecom giant's plan to shift focus from destructive market competition to AI-driven infrastructure, 6G research, and full-lifecycle AI Token management. The company expects to leverage hundreds of billions of yuan in investments during China's 15th Five-Year Plan period while introducing Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) as a core operational role. The strategy signals a shift by major Chinese telecom operators from selling basic connectivity to monetizing compute power, enterprise AI tokens, and integrated AI clouds. By integrating compute supply, model calling, and application deployment into a single operational accounting system, China Unicom aims to avoid homogeneous price wars and unlock higher-margin enterprise digital transformation opportunities. China Unicom's total connections have surpassed 1.3 billion, and the operator is developing a drag-and-drop digital marketplace to deliver on-demand AI capability components. It also aims to manage the full lifecycle of AI Tokens—from creation, storage, and transfer to cleaning and application—treating compute supply and model invocation as a unified billable ecosystem.