BEIJING, March 6 (Xinhua) -- Artificial intelligence (AI) adoption by Chinese businesses has outpaced the global average thanks to increased spending on research and development and industry growth, according to Wednesday's China Daily.

Over 47 percent of the CEOs in China that participated in a survey said there are some forms of AI initiatives currently in place in their organization, compared with 42 percent globally, the newspaper quoted a PwC report as saying.

In addition, 39 percent of the Chinese executives indicated that they have plans to start introducing AI initiatives in their organization in the next three years, 4 percentage points higher than their global counterparts.

Only 14 percent of the Chinese executives said they have no plans to pursue any AI initiatives at the moment, much lower than the global average of 23 percent, the report said.

The report covered responses from 176 executives based on the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong between September and October 2018.