The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has aroused widespread concern globally, especially its application in economic development is regarded as an important force to promote economic structural transformation and industrial upgrading. As the second largest economy in the world, China is gradually accelerating the process of deep integration of artificial intelligence and economic development. This paper systematically investigates the impact of AI on China’s economic development through the CiteSpace bibliometric analysis tool. The study used 4,562 relevant documents included in the China Knowledge Network Database (CNKI), extracted the topics using the LDA model, and combined with the co-occurrence analysis of the literature to reveal the current status and trends of research in the field of AI and China’s economic development. The results show that after 2016, the research on AI and economic development has gradually heated up, and the number of publications reached its peak in 2023, with an annual number of publications close to 931. Furthermore, the keyword analysis of the literature shows that the main research focuses on areas such as “digital economy”, “industrial upgrading” and “job market”, among which the high-frequency words of “artificial intelligence” and “economic development” are 11,687 and 8,124 times respectively. Artificial intelligence plays an important role in promoting China’s economic development, especially in industrial upgrading and technological innovation with significant impact.
