Your Excellency Ambassador Ahmad Faisal Muhamad,

Dr. Amany Asfour, Dr. Bahous, Dr. Keita, 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good afternoon. 

We are entering an era where scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation are profoundly reshaping our world with unprecedented force. Digital and AI technologies are no longer mere tools. They are evolving from information-driven to intelligence-driven and from passive tools to active intelligent agents. Against this backdrop, we are pleased to host this side event together with Egypt, Malaysia, UN Women, and UNFPA to explore how digital and AI technology can be used to better promote and protect the rights and interests of women and girls.

Last October, at the Global Leaders’ Meeting on Women, Chinese President Xi Jinping pointed out that we need to seize the opportunity of the new wave of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, and empower women’s high-quality development through innovation. China is committed to making digital technologies inclusive and accessible. With 5G coverage reaching every household in both urban and rural areas, we are using big data, cloud computing, and AI to provide more solutions for the protection of women’s rights and interests.

China’s Law on the Protection of Women's Rights and Interests prohibits dissemination of information that insults or defames women online and bans gender discrimination in the digital sphere. The Interim Measures of Generative AI Service Management require the prevention of gender bias and discrimination at the upstream, including in algorithm design and data selection. The Regulation on the Administration of Algorithm Recommendations in Internet Information Services mandates internet platforms to promptly remove discriminatory content, and ensure algorithmic recommendations are fair and impartial. 

In practice, we have established an anti-domestic violence big data platform, equipped with an algorithm for assessing domestic violence risks. For instance, when a woman repeatedly calls the police or seeks medical treatment, but never applies for a protection order, it often signals that she is in danger but is unable to seek help. In such cases, the platform automatically identifies these individuals in high-risks and send early warnings to prosecutors, who will take the initiative to intervene and support her in protection order applications. As a result, protection order issuance rate increased from 48 percent to 92 percent. In this case, digital technology has made judicial protection more proactive, efficient, and precise.

We have also developed a supervision model for protecting women's rights in the labour market. It targets discriminatory keywords and expressions such as “male priority”, “age under 45 preferred”, “priority for married and childbearing candidates”, and automatically monitors recruitment information on platforms. Once discriminatory clauses are identified, the model automatically generates leads that prompt relevant authorities to urge platforms to remove such contents. To date, procuratorial authorities across China have developed and applied over 80 digital models for the protection of women and children's rights, covering all relevant fields. We will later show you a presentation by a prosecutor from a district of Beijing. She will share her experience of using digital tools in work.

Today, technological inclusion opens new pathways for women to realize their potential, enabling them to gain a strong sense of accomplishment and fulfillment in the digital age. We have launched an AI-dol Initiative which provides AI training for women in rural areas of China. These rural women, who once stayed home to raise children, till the land or do odd jobs, have received training and become AI data annotators and AI trainers. Every image they label on computers teaches the machines how to perceive the world. Jobs once held only by white-collars in China's metropolitans like Beijing and Shanghai have now become part of the daily life of women in western rural China. One child has said proudly, “My mom teaches robots!”. Here, we would like to show a short video about the AI-dol Initiative. 

(Video Show)

Digital technology offer more than just jobs—they inspire the inner drive and bring out the inner glow of women. In China, women make up over half of internet entrepreneurs, and account for about one-third of the workforce in digital trade and live-streaming industries. In 2024, over 14,000 women obtained certification as AI trainers. In Beijing, the proportion of women working in AI even exceeds that of men by 2%. AI empowerment has enabled women to be idols of themselves.

Dear colleagues, China actively promotes international cooperation in empowering women through digital and AI tech. In July 2025, China established the Global Exchange and Cooperation Center for Digital Empowerment of Women. To date, it has provided training on digital and AI technology applications and development to over 300 female officials from 53 countries. The city of Yiwu of China, known as the world’s capital of small commodities, is home to many female entrepreneurs from around the world. Local authorities have offered tailored training in cross-border e-commerce and live streaming to help them expand business and sell products to every corner of the globe. A Chinese tech company launched a program in Southeast Asia to help women with digital skills, providing coding and data analysis training to over 2,000 women. 800 of them have started online business after completing the training program.

Having said the above, we should bear in mind that digital and AI technology does not automatically benefit all women and that we must harness technologies for the good. Here, I would like to propose the following three recommendations:

First, we should improve digital infrastructure to ensure that all women have equal access to digital tools and services, with special attention to the needs of elderly, disabled and impoverished women, so as to make digital technology truly inclusive, equitable and universally beneficial.

Second, we should uphold the principle of “technology for good and AI for good”, integrate gender equality principles into algorithm design, data collection, model development and other upstream links, so as to eliminate gender bias and discrimination at the source. We should promote the application of technological innovations in the protection of women's rights and interests, making them a solid shield for gender equality. 

Third, we should deepen international exchanges and cooperation in digital and AI technology, build broad consensus, foster a gender-responsive digital governance ecosystem, and deliver the benefits  equally to all countries and all people.

Let us work together to harness technology for good and ensure that AI empowers women, so that together we can create a brighter future for women's advancement in the digital era.

Thank you.