China's Company Law was first enacted in 1993 where, starting a company meant assembling shareholders, directors, and a minimum pool of registered capital. A single shareholder company was prohibited. A revision to the Company Law in 2005 introduced the one-person limited liability company as a distinct legal category. Then, the conditions for a one-person company (OPC) were strict: a natural person was permitted to hold only one OPC nationwide, and the minimum registered capital for that single entity was set at RMB100,000. Amendments to the Company Law in 2014 saw the minimum registered capital requirement removed and the rule that a natural person could invest in only one OPC at a time was scrapped. An OPC does not necessarily have only one staff member - "one-person" refers to having a single shareholder, who may be either a natural person or a legal entity, while the company's directors, supervisors and senior management may be other individuals, and it may hire regular staff.

In the artificial intelligence (AI) era, OPC has taken on a new meaning: OPC = Individual + AI Agents + Computing Power + Data. A single individual can now accomplish tasks that traditionally require a multi-person enterprise, thanks to AI technology. In recent years, this type of AI-driven OPC has blossomed like mushrooms. It has emerged as one of China's hottest entrepreneurial trends. According to the China OPC Development Trends Report (2025-2030) released by the Zhongguancun Talent Association, as of Jun 2025, the number of OPC nationwide has exceeded 16 mln. In the first half of 2025 alone, the number of newly registered OPCs nationwide reached 2.86 mln, a year-on-year increase of 47%, accounting for 23.8% of all newly registered enterprises. Data from opcquan.com showed that in the first half of 2026, there were 618 OPC communities, covering 24 provinces and 75 cities.