BCIwiki (bciwiki.com) — Control-room operators at nuclear power plants, underground miners and grid dispatchers share an occupational risk: fatigue and lapses of attention. An action plan issued in March 2026 by the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology in eastern China and eight other agencies wrote these industries into the application scenarios for brain-computer interfaces.
The public version carries no document number and its date can be confirmed only to March 2026. Co-issuers are the provincial development and reform commission, the departments of education, science and technology and health, the state-owned assets supervision commission, the data bureau, the intellectual property office and the drug administration. The plan has 14 key tasks.
Under a BCI-plus-manufacturing scenario, the plan targets safety management and deep-sea and deep-pit operations, and invites companies in hazardous chemicals, nuclear energy, mining and electric power to pilot BCIs first. Most provinces describe industrial use in general terms such as manufacturing or human-machine collaboration; Jiangsu named four industries and two types of work environment.
Non-invasive BCIs for fatigue monitoring, attention assessment and alertness warnings need no implantation, device registration or insurance payment, and are more mature than medical applications. Nuclear power, mining and grid operators are mostly state-owned, which is consistent with the state-owned assets commission’s place on the list.
The provincial data bureau is also a co-issuer. BCIs generate high-dimensional neural data, and collection standards, storage security, cross-institution sharing and personal information protection all require a data regulator.
Reading Jiangsu’s targets requires attention to dates. The 2027 section of the overall goals is almost entirely qualitative, with one hard number: at least two provincial BCI industry clusters. The quantitative targets sit at the end of the 14 tasks, and all of them are set for 2030.
By 2030 Jiangsu aims for at least 15 science and technology projects and at least 15 key technology tasks, about ten provincial innovation platforms, at least 30 recognized first-of-a-kind or new products, at least 20 products registered as medical devices, at least 30 typical BCI consumer scenarios, and standardized test and patient datasets of at least 20,000 cases.
Comparing these with other provinces’ 2027 targets overstates Jiangsu’s ambition. Shanghai’s 2027 target is more than five products completing type testing and Sichuan’s is three invasive and five non-invasive registrations; Jiangsu’s 20 registrations have three more years and may include many non-invasive Class II devices that are easier to register.
The plan also supports qualified universities in setting up BCI schools. Most provinces strengthen interdisciplinary training within existing departments, while Jiangsu proposes an institutional step and names two existing bases, the Jiangsu BCI Research Institute and Nanjing University’s BCI research institute.
Jiangsu’s strength is manufacturing. Its medical device industry is among China’s largest, with clusters in Suzhou, Nanjing and Wuxi and strong supply capacity in electrode materials, sensors and chip packaging. Public reports say more than 60 related companies are based in the province, and Nanjing’s Qixia district has planned a BCI industrial park of more than 60,000 square meters with a RMB 5 billion parent fund. The provincial plan’s funding clauses give no amounts.
Jiangsu’s pricing is often misreported. Implantation at RMB 6,600, removal at RMB 3,200 and fitting at RMB 966 come from a draft published by the provincial healthcare security bureau on July 29, 2025 for comment until August 4. Notice Su Yibao Fa [2025] No. 46, dated December 29, 2025, created 79 neurological service items, but neither it nor its ten annexes mentions BCI, and the three national codes reserved for BCI are blank.
Jiangsu has published proposed prices but has not created BCI items in a formal document. Listing RMB 6,600 in provincial price comparisons overstates its progress.
Whether the hazardous-industry scenarios materialize depends on how the pilot mechanism is built, who approves it and which companies take part. Whether the 20 registrations include any Class III implants will matter more in 2030 than the total.