When did computers start playing xiangqi?
These answers restate the rules implemented by our open-source engine, which follows the WXF laws and is regression-tested against the official 110-diagram repetition casebook. Where an answer refers to a specific position, that position lives on the linked reference page, where the build verifies it against the engine before publishing.
Direct answer
Xiangqi-playing programs emerged in the late twentieth century, part of the same wave of computer game research that produced strong chess engines, but with far less funding and academic attention behind it, since the game's player base sat mostly outside the English-language computing world where most of that early research was concentrated.
Why xiangqi engines lagged behind chess engines
Computer chess drew enormous research investment for decades, culminating in software that surpassed the strongest humans. Xiangqi's own software development followed a similar trajectory technically, search, evaluation, eventually machine learning, but with a smaller community of programmers and far less institutional funding behind it, so the milestones simply arrived later and drew less international notice.
Where things stand today
Modern xiangqi engines are comfortably superhuman, the same conclusion computer chess reached earlier, and they are now a normal part of serious study rather than a research curiosity. See has xiangqi been solved for what that superhuman strength does and does not mean.
Related questions
Are today's xiangqi engines as strong relative to humans as chess engines?
Broadly yes, the gap to the best humans is comparable, even though the engines themselves come from a smaller research tradition.
Can a general chess engine play xiangqi?
Not without adaptation. See can chess engines play xiangqi for why the rules differ too much for a direct reuse.
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