On April 28, 2026, the Hubei Provincial Archives and Wuhan University officially signed the "AI + Archives" Deepened Cooperation Agreement. Jianzhou Gao, Deputy Secretary-General of the CPC Hubei Provincial Committee; Xiangyang Zhou, Director of the Hubei Provincial Archives; and Wei Lu, Member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Wuhan University Committee and Vice President of Wuhan University, among others, attended the signing ceremony.

This cooperation is a practical measure to implement the national "AI+" strategy, the guiding principles of the National Conference of Archives Bureau and Archives Directors, and the National Archives Administration of China's "Opinions on Promoting the Application of Artificial Intelligence in the Archives Sector." It is also a key practice in the digital transformation and intelligent upgrading of Hubei's archival work, and will contribute archival strength to Hubei's accelerated development into an important strategic pivot for the rise of central China.

The two parties have a solid foundation for cooperation. In 2023, they jointly established the National Archives Administration Key Laboratory of Intelligent Development and Service of Archives, achieving interim results in scientific research, technology application, and talent cultivation. This cooperation focuses on four key scenarios: intelligent archival retrieval, intelligent cataloging, intelligent compilation and research, and intelligent review for opening archives to the public. The parties will jointly tackle core technologies, participate in formulating industry standards, co-build intelligent systems, and conduct specialized training, promoting the deep integration of artificial intelligence with archival work.

In his speech, Xiangyang Zhou stated that the cooperation should adopt a higher political standpoint, uphold the Party's leadership over archival and scientific work, and firmly maintain the correct direction of cooperation; uphold fundamental principles while innovating, focus on the pain points and difficulties of archival work, and ensure that cooperation projects can be implemented and promoted; strictly adhere to the bottom line of security and confidentiality, integrating data security and confidentiality responsibilities throughout the entire cooperation process and strictly fulfilling security, confidentiality, and risk prevention requirements; and strengthen coordination, pool the strengths of all parties, and create a replicable and scalable Hubei model of "AI + Archives."

Wei Lu stated that Wuhan University will leverage the strengths of its national first-class undergraduate program in archival science and its key laboratory, working closely with the Provincial Archives to build an intelligent application system covering the entire archival process of "collection, management, preservation, and utilization." The university will produce core achievements with independent intellectual property rights, cultivate interdisciplinary professionals, and jointly build a national demonstration model of government-industry-academia-research collaborative innovation in "AI + Archives."

This signing injects new momentum into the modernization of Hubei's archival work. It will produce Hubei experience that is implementable, verifiable, and transferable, striving to build a Hubei model for the digital and intelligent transformation of archives nationwide.

Source | Hubei Provincial Archives Dudang