According to a report in China Daily on February 10, 2026
Leading Chinese technology companies have invested tens of billions of yuan in 2026 to accelerate the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into everyday life, with a focus on the Spring Festival holiday—a period of peak consumer activity in China. Industry experts suggest this could give China an early lead in large-scale consumer AI adoption, a feat challenging for Western rivals to replicate.
At the center of the initiative is Alibaba’s Qwen app, which launched a 3 billion yuan ($420 million) campaign. Users could access free or heavily discounted food, retail items, and services—but only through the app’s AI-assisted ordering system. Popular offers, such as milk tea for 0.01 yuan, sparked a social media frenzy, earning the nickname “AI milk tea” among consumers. Alibaba’s ecosystem—including Taobao, Fliggy, Damai, Hema, and Alipay—links AI prompts directly to ordering and payment processes, creating a closed-loop digital experience.
Other major players joined the trend:
Tencent Holdings’ Yuanbao AI assistant distributed 1 billion yuan in digital red envelopes while testing AI-powered social features.
Baidu Inc. offered 500 million yuan in incentives to encourage users to shift from traditional search functions to AI-assisted queries.
According to Wang Peng from the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, the campaign is more than a promotional effort:
“It is a behavioral experiment, lowering the cost of trials to near zero and training consumers to rely on AI for decisions and transactions.”
China’s combination of massive mobile internet adoption, entrenched mobile payments, and mature online-to-offline commerce networks gives its AI ecosystem a unique advantage. AI systems can not only recommend actions but also execute payments and services seamlessly, a level of integration difficult to achieve in more fragmented Western digital markets.
However, experts caution that subsidies alone may not create lasting change. Pan Helin, from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, noted:
“Holiday discounts can drive short-term engagement, but the real test is whether users continue to interact with AI for food, travel, or retail once the incentives disappear. Only AI products that solve real problems and integrate into daily life will endure.”
The Spring Festival initiative may mark a turning point in mainstream consumer adoption of AI in China. While Western companies primarily focus on workplace productivity and software automation, Chinese tech giants are embedding AI into daily consumer routines, potentially reshaping retail, entertainment, travel, and social interactions at an unprecedented scale.