Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent Intensify AI Competition into Lunar New Year

As the Lunar New Year approaches — traditionally a key window for major consumer-internet product launches in China (e.g., WeChat Red Envelopes) — leading Chinese internet platforms are expected to release AI-related products in a concentrated manner to maximize visibility, traffic acquisition, and public attention.

Alibaba Group (BABA)

Potential Key Announcements on January 15

• Qwen App Positioning

  • Integration across five major business platforms: Taoshan (food delivery), Taotian, Fliggy, Amap, and Alipay (utilities and hospital registration).

  • The Qwen App is positioned as Alibaba’s unified consumer AI gateway and its flagship 2C AI interface, targeting mass household adoption as a China-based equivalent of ChatGPT.

• Model Updates

  • Qwen 3.0 updates are expected to be announced, with internal testing claiming coding performance exceeding Anthropic.

  • Vertical-specific models trained for education, finance, and healthcare.

  • Alibaba is expected to claim Qwen 3.0 outperforms GPT-5.0.

• Apple Partnership: Formal partnership with Apple expected; Qwen positioned as the ‘China Gemini’ within Apple’s ecosystem.

• Additional Strategic Themes: Hugging Face collaboration, global deployment strategy, and on-device model rollout.

Pre-Lunar New Year Outlook

Alibaba is expected to release Qwen 3.5 updates prior to the Lunar New Year.