China's daily token usage has exceeded 140 trillion, marking a more than 1,000-fold increase since early 2024, according to Liu Liehong, Director of the National Data Bureau. Speaking at the 2026 China Development Forum, Liu highlighted the rapid growth of token usage, which has become integral to the monetization of the artificial intelligence industry. Tokens, the smallest units of information processed by large models, are now central to a new value system focused on invocation, distribution, and settlement. Liu emphasized that this surge in token usage is part of China's broader market-oriented reform of data elements, fostering a "data supply—value realization" cycle. This development underscores the growing importance of tokens in the digital economy, as they offer measurability, pricing, and tradability, paving the way for innovative economic models.