China’s biggest internet firms have transformed the run‑up to the Lunar New Year into a sprawling, AI‑accented promotional war, with announced red‑envelope and prize pools approaching 10 billion yuan. JD.com, Alibaba’s Qianwen unit, Tencent and Baidu are openly using cash, discounts and platform mechanics to push new AI features into the hands of tens of millions of consumers, while ByteDance is leveraging spring‑festival programming to seed hardware adoption.
The public figures are eye‑catching: JD and Alibaba’s Qianwen have each earmarked 3 billion yuan, Tencent’s “Yuanbao” initiative committed 1 billion, and Baidu’s Wenxin launched a 500 million yuan campaign; ByteDance’s Doubao has not disclosed a headline number but plans more than 100,000 technology gifts tied to the national gala. Taken together with smaller promotions, the total industry spend is approaching 100 billion yuan in Chinese accounting — roughly 10 billion yuan in sum, or about $1.4 billion at current rates.
What sets this year apart is the prominence of AI as both a marketing hook and a product conduit. Firms are not merely giving away cash; they are wrapping incentives around AI interactions. Baidu has integrated red packets into its Wenxin assistant in search contexts, Tencent is pushing social sharing and chat‑driven “Yuanbao” mechanics inside WeChat, Alibaba is incentivising AI‑driven ordering and “free order” promotions for delivery and e‑commerce, and JD has applied AI to its supply chain — publishing an “AI New‑Year Goods Map” that predicts demand and prepositions stock.
Practical deals remain central to the offer. JD’s 3 billion yuan package includes time‑limited steep discounts on flagship consumer goods and limited‑edition products, while Alibaba’s campaign mixes AI prompts with the promise of waived bills at restaurants and take‑out services. ByteDance is turning to the state broadcaster’s spring gala as a megaphone for its hardware ecosystem, distributing gadgets and cash to viewers to accelerate product trial and social buzz.
The campaign is producing conspicuous industry friction. Tencent moved to block sharing links for its own Yuanbao promotion on occasion, drawing attention to platform governance and competitive tensions. Popular “free order” cards have prompted local chaos for merchants and intermittent page‑crashes as demand spikes. Those incidents underscore how high‑stakes subsidies can strain both backend logistics and the political tolerance for disruptive promotions.
Beyond the fireworks, the strategic logic is clear: every incentivised AI interaction is a form of user education. Firms are racing to make their AI interfaces the habitual first step for search, shopping, social chat and ordering. Even if the short‑term outlay is large, the long‑term prize is stickier data capture, deeper user habits and a dominant “AI super‑entry” that funnels future commerce and advertising to the platform.
That competition will reshape China’s internet economy. Consumers gain generous short‑term benefits and widespread exposure to AI tools, but the spending arms race amplifies advantages for the largest ecosystems and increases the barrier to entry for rivals. Regulators and merchants will watch the social and logistical consequences closely, because the campaigns simultaneously expand digital commerce and stress its operational and governance limits.
For international observers, the campaign is a revealing case study in platform strategy: generous subsidies are no longer just about market share or gross merchandise volume. They are calibrated investments in an AI‑native user interface — a bet that whoever embeds their model and assistant deepest into festive rituals and everyday flows will set the default modes of interaction for years to come.