Beijing gives AI virtual singer Yuri a digital ID and China's first Digital Artist Card

On June 11, 2026, Beijing E-Town handed the AI virtual singer Yuri China’s first Digital Artist Card. It’s a license for paid shows, issued inside a regulatory sandbox pilot, and it came 4 months after the same Beijing development zone gave Yuri China’s first virtual idol identity certification.

ABC News brought the story to English readers on October 7, describing an official ID that lists Yuri’s name, birthday, address and facial features. ABC also cited a 2025 Communication University of China count of at least 1.3 million Chinese companies linked to digital humans. By October 9, a viral X post had stretched it into AI personas getting “the legal ability to open digital-currency wallets, sign contracts, and form commercial partnerships.”

The Beijing paperwork says something narrower. The wallet and the deals belong to the company that runs her.

What Beijing E-Town gave AI virtual singer Yuri in 2026

Yuri is run by Beijing Guyu Qiushi Business Technology, a company based in Beijing E-Town (the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area). Founder Zhao Hanqing launched her in June 2025, and her debut single “Surreal” has passed 11 million streams, according to China Daily.

She has collected 2 credentials this year:

• January 31: Beijing E-Town issued her China’s first virtual idol identity certification, which Xinhua calls a “digital ID card”.
• June 11: the zone gave her a sandbox access certificate and the Digital Artist Card, which the Beijing government’s notice calls “a dedicated compliance certificate” for managing virtual performers.

Before her company got in, a review panel checked who owns the rights to Yuri, the safety of the large model behind her content, and on-site and online operating security. Her paid shows are monitored in real time. On September 11 she played her first live show in Shanghai, the same avatar-concert format that Unit1 raised $20m to scale.

In remarks published by The Beijing News, Zhao said the sandbox’s value comes down to one word: certainty.

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What a company fears most isn't having rules. It's not knowing where the rules are.

Can China’s digital human ID card let AI singer Yuri open a bank account or sign contracts?

No. China’s digital human ID card was issued to Yuri, but the wallet that takes her money belongs to her operator.

In September, at the 2026 China International Fair for Trade in Services, Yuri and a second digital human, KOKO, became some of the first digital humans in China linked to digital yuan corporate wallets. A Beijing E-Town notice from September 16 is specific about whose wallets they are: the companies operating Yuri and KOKO opened them, with support from the People’s Bank of China and ICBC, and the digital human is the user-facing front end.

So brand deals and custom content get paid into the company’s wallet, and fans buy content or send virtual gifts the same way. The company signs, gets paid and answers for what Yuri does on stage.

The card is also local. Beijing E-Town is one development zone, and ABC notes China has no unified national system for digital humans yet.

If you run an AI artist anywhere else, compare the 3 approaches. Spotify’s AI Persona badge labels the persona, and Denmark’s digital replica bill protects the real people a persona could copy. Beijing licenses the persona and keeps the company behind it under watch.