BCIwiki (bciwiki.com) — On January 7, 2025, the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission, the Zhongguancun Science Park Administrative Committee and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology jointly issued an action plan to accelerate brain-computer interface innovation for 2025 to 2030. It was the first provincial-level policy document in China named after BCI, issued more than six months before the national seven-ministry guidelines.
The document is numbered Jingkefa [2025] No. 2 and sets out five groups of key tasks and three sets of support measures.
The order of the issuing bodies signals the plan’s character. The science commission and the Zhongguancun committee come first and the industry bureau second, making it a science and technology document. Of the provinces that followed, Tianjin, Jiangxi, Anhui and Zhejiang issued theirs through the provincial government’s general office, Jiangsu’s was led by its industry department with nine agencies, and Shandong’s second document was led by its health commission with 16 agencies.
Beijing’s targets come in two tiers. By 2027 it aims to achieve breakthroughs in electrodes, chips and encoding and decoding algorithms, cultivate three to five unicorns or would-be unicorns, and build two to three product experience and showcase centers. By 2030 it aims for three to five globally influential technology leaders, around 100 innovative small and medium-sized firms, one to two BCI industry cluster demonstration zones, and large-scale commercial use in medicine, elderly care, industry and education.
Every target points to companies and platforms, and the plan contains no production or revenue figure. Shanghai set a target of more than five products completing type testing, Sichuan 3,000 invasive procedures a year, Guangdong a core industry worth tens of billions of yuan, and Tianjin an industry fund cluster of more than RMB 10 billion. Beijing counts unicorns, technology leaders and innovative smaller firms.
Unicorn status is decided by capital markets, which policy cannot control, so this yardstick leaves delivery to how private investors value local companies. Beijing’s confidence rests on its research organization capacity: its science commission distributes the annual application guidelines for the national brain science and brain-inspired research megaproject, Zhongguancun has a mature incubation system, and the city has China’s densest concentration of top-tier hospitals.
The five key tasks are raising original innovation, strengthening platforms, building tiers of technology companies, accelerating product development and application scenarios, and establishing a standards system. Among provincial documents issued before, only Beijing and Tianjin listed standards as a key task in its own right, which points to an interest in rule-setting.
One support measure is rare among the provincial plans. Beijing encourages insurers to offer dedicated, customized insurance products and services for BCI medical devices. Invasive BCIs are high-risk implants, and liability for surgical complications or device failure is an unavoidable question once clinical use expands. Most provinces address the issue through regulatory review and ethics guidance; Beijing approaches it through insurance.
On payment, Beijing is among the most advanced regions. A pricing notice numbered Jingyibaofa [2025] No. 15, issued jointly by the municipal healthcare security bureau and the human resources and social security bureau, took effect on December 27, 2025. It sets invasive implantation at RMB 7,980 per procedure, removal at RMB 3,500, non-invasive fitting at RMB 990 for the first session and RMB 330 thereafter, and separate semi-invasive (epidural) prices of RMB 4,800 for implantation and RMB 1,500 for removal, with a 30% surcharge for children.
RMB 7,980 is the highest provincial price BCIWiki has verified; the National Healthcare Security Administration said in April 2026 that invasive implantation fees cluster between RMB 6,000 and RMB 6,600. All three items are listed as Category A, with no upfront co-payment for insured patients. As of August 2026, only Beijing and Zhejiang had brought BCI services into basic medical insurance payment, and Zhejiang covers only the non-invasive fitting fee under Category B.
The restriction sits on the provider side. Category A coverage applies only at Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Xuanwu Hospital, Peking University First Hospital and Peking Union Medical College Hospital, and the fees may be charged only by tertiary hospitals, so insured Beijing patients treated elsewhere cannot use the benefit. The children’s surcharge is classed separately as Category C under work-injury insurance.
Two points can be checked against the plan. Whether three to five unicorns or would-be unicorns emerge by 2027 depends on investor valuations of the BCI sector. Whether the insurance clause takes effect depends on whether insurers are willing to design products for high-risk implants while procedure numbers remain too small for actuarial pricing.