Advertising promoting ByteDance’s cloud and AI service platform ‘Volcano Engine’ and chatbot ‘Doubao’ at the Beijing Capital International airport in Beijing. ADEK BERRY/AFP via Getty Images
BEIJING — When it comes to AI chatbots, U.S. firms often emphasize building the best technology. Chinese companies, by contrast, are focused on getting people to use their apps constantly. Nineteen-year-old delivery driver Li Hao is a case in point.
Li says he normally uses ByteDance’s Doubao, China’s most popular chatbot. But over the Lunar New Year in February he tried Alibaba’s Qwen because the company was offering free milk tea for orders made through the chatbot.
“I tried it and got a milk tea,” he said. “After that, I didn’t use it again.”
Welcome to the frontline of China’s chatbot wars.
Competition among AI apps in China is intense, and firms are spending heavily to demonstrate AI’s everyday usefulness—especially for shopping. The free milk tea wasn’t only to attract users; it was meant to teach them to rely on chatbots to make purchases.
The market is led by major tech players such as Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance, alongside startups like Moonshot AI and DeepSeek, which drew attention last year with a high-performing AI model. Alibaba says it set aside more than $430 million for holiday promotions. Tencent and Baidu handed out millions in coupons and prizes. Morgan Stanley estimates top apps together spent over $1.1 billion on promotions during the Lunar New Year, a peak shopping and gifting period.
“Competition between domestic Chinese tech players is heating up again, which I believe is a good thing, from the perspective of innovation,” said George Chen, a tech analyst with the Asia Group in Hong Kong. He likens the spending to the mobile payments battles a decade ago between Alibaba and Tencent, which helped accelerate China’s e-commerce growth.
China now has one of the world’s most advanced e-commerce ecosystems, with ubiquitous super apps that handle everything from bill payments to travel bookings and fast deliveries. Chen says history is repeating.
The new front is AI, and Chinese companies want chatbots to do more than answer questions—they want them to complete transactions. With Qwen, ordering milk tea can be as simple as typing “I want to order a milk tea.” The chatbot offers nearby options, lets users customize their order and completes payment within the app, avoiding redirects to other services. If you’re an Alipay user, Qwen can use your location and enable one-tap payment and delivery details.
Doubao is integrated into Douyin (the Chinese TikTok) as a conversational assistant, while Tencent’s Yuanbao is embedded in WeChat and tied to WeChat Pay. Unlike single-purpose apps such as DoorDash or Uber Eats, chatbots can handle a wide range of tasks in a single conversation—from buying plane tickets to hailing rides or booking medical appointments.
Kyle Chan of the Brookings Institution says Alibaba views Qwen as a potential new everything app. “They kind of see the AI model as being the starting point for interfacing with sort of everything else you do in the online world, and maybe even, to a certain extent, in the offline way in the real world,” he said.
The promotions were so large they overwhelmed some takeout shops when orders surged, according to online videos and reports. Still, they drove record traffic to AI platforms. Research firm QuestMobile reported more than 73.5 million people used Qwen on Feb. 7 during the promotion. Alibaba has not released official figures. ByteDance’s Doubao also saw daily users spike, exceeding 144 million after partnering with state TV for Lunar New Year gala promotions.
Retention remains a question. Daily usage has fallen since the holiday spike, according to news reports. After getting a free milk tea via Qwen, Li Hao returned to his preferred chatbot.
“I still prefer using Doubao,” he said.