In the rapid development and widespread empowerment of artificial intelligence (AI), relevant policy documents play a key role in guiding, regulating, and governing its responsible innovation and application. The objective of this paper is to sort the evolution of China’s AI policy in the twenty-first century, and analyze its role and impacts in the development of AI in China. With the methods of intelligent database retrieval, manual comparison and supplementation, and semantic analysis, this paper collects China’s AI policy documents at the national government, municipal city, and private enterprise levels in the twenty-first century, and sorts out four periods of its evolution. By investigating and analyzing, this paper considers these AI policy documents not only attach importance to the technological innovation itself and its deep integration and extensive application in various industries and sectors such as transportation, education, finance, healthcare, elderly care, agriculture, and water conservancy, but also increasingly focus on the ethical and legal development of AI, as well as the construction and development of the AI ethical governance system. China is committed to global AI governance and actively contributes its wisdom to strengthening global AI governance. This paper might provide useful information for AI development and help broader stakeholders engage in AI policy discussions.