China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) Vice President Wei Liang said on July 18 that China’s average daily token calls climbed from about 100 billion at the start of 2024 to 140 trillion by the end of March 2026, marking growth of more than 1,000 times. He said the rise of AI agents is giving shape to a new “token economy.” In this context, tokens refer to the basic units large models use to process information and measure invocation costs. Wei described token growth as one of the clearest gauges of industrial development. He also said that in the agent era, a single user instruction can trigger multiple rounds of model calls and resource consumption, driving a surge in demand for AI computing power. As agents move into scaled deployment, new models are emerging around token metering, scheduling, pricing, and trading.
On July 18, Wei Liang, vice president of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), said China’s average daily token calls had risen from about 100 billion at the start of 2024 to 140 trillion by the end of March 2026, an increase of more than 1,000-fold.
Wei said AI agents are giving rise to a new economic form that he called the “token economy.” In this case, tokens are the units used by large models to process information and measure calling costs, and their growth rate serves as a direct indicator of industry development.
He added that in the age of agents, a single user instruction may trigger multiple rounds of model calls and resource consumption, directly lifting demand for AI computing power. As agent applications scale up, new models are also taking shape around token metering, scheduling, pricing, and trading.
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