diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 75673742..e5d6c845 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 ## 0.8.1
+* feat: add support for downloading models from modelscope
 * fix: fix list index out of range error caused by calling LayoutElements.from_list() with empty list
 
 ## 0.8.0
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index ac759757..1e6b5886 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -61,6 +61,9 @@ The inference pipeline operates by finding text elements in a document page usin
 
 We offer several detection models including [Detectron2](https://github.com/facebookresearch/detectron2) and [YOLOX](https://github.com/Megvii-BaseDetection/YOLOX).
 
+> [!NOTE]  
+> By default, `unstructured_inference` downloads models from [HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/). If you would like to use models from [ModelScope](https://modelscope.cn/), set the environment variable `UNSTRUCTURED_USE_MODELSCOPE=true` before initialization.
+
 ### Using a non-default model
 
 When doing inference, an alternate model can be used by passing the model object to the ingestion method via the `model` parameter. The `get_model` function can be used to construct one of our out-of-the-box models from a keyword, e.g.:
diff --git a/unstructured_inference/models/tables.py b/unstructured_inference/models/tables.py
index c390378e..90cf2a90 100644
--- a/unstructured_inference/models/tables.py
+++ b/unstructured_inference/models/tables.py
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 # https://github.com/microsoft/table-transformer/blob/main/src/inference.py
 # https://github.com/NielsRogge/Transformers-Tutorials/blob/master/Table%20Transformer/Using_Table_Transformer_for_table_detection_and_table_structure_recognition.ipynb
+import os
 import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
 from collections import defaultdict
 from pathlib import Path
@@ -139,7 +140,14 @@ def load_agent():
 
     if not hasattr(tables_agent, "model"):
         logger.info("Loading the Table agent ...")
-        tables_agent.initialize("microsoft/table-transformer-structure-recognition")
+        if os.environ.get("UNSTRUCTURED_USE_MODELSCOPE", "false") == "true":
+            from modelscope import snapshot_download
+            model_dir = snapshot_download(
+                "AI-ModelScope/table-transformer-structure-recognition-v1.1-all"
+            )
+            tables_agent.initialize(model_dir)
+        else:
+            tables_agent.initialize("microsoft/table-transformer-structure-recognition")
 
     return
 
diff --git a/unstructured_inference/utils.py b/unstructured_inference/utils.py
index 696a2e8a..1e7f8a16 100644
--- a/unstructured_inference/utils.py
+++ b/unstructured_inference/utils.py
@@ -112,4 +112,12 @@ def download_if_needed_and_get_local_path(path_or_repo: str, filename: str, **kw
     if os.path.exists(full_path):
         return full_path
     else:
-        return hf_hub_download(path_or_repo, filename, **kwargs)
+        if os.environ.get("UNSTRUCTURED_USE_MODELSCOPE", "false") == "true":
+            from modelscope import snapshot_download
+            path_or_repo = path_or_repo.replace(
+                "unstructuredio/", "AI-ModelScope/")
+            model_dir = snapshot_download(
+                path_or_repo, allow_patterns=filename)
+            return os.path.join(model_dir, filename)
+        else:
+            return hf_hub_download(path_or_repo, filename, **kwargs)