AI driving New Year consumer demand in China

By Saadet Gokce

ISTANBUL (AA) - Artificial intelligence (AI) is driving Lunar New Year consumer demand in China, with companies rolling out promotional campaigns, according to Sixth Tone magazine on Wednesday.

In one campaign, Chinese tech firm Alibaba offered large-scale bubble tea vouchers that users could redeem instantly by asking its Qwen3 large language model to place an order at shops, quickly overwhelming stores and delivery services.

Orders exceeded 10 million within nine hours of the launch, straining the system and causing server crashes.

Other companies, including gaming company Tencent, and the Baidu search platform, have joined the subsidy drive, dubbed the "red envelope war" online, which began last week.

Tencent launched a 1 billion yuan ($140 million) red envelope promotion through its Yuanbao AI assistant; Baidu’s Wenxin AI followed with a 500 million yuan ($72 million) campaign. Both offered digital cash for later use.

Alibaba’s campaign was valued at 3 billion yuan ($433 million).

The WeChat messaging app blocked the shareable voucher link and disabled the copying of invitation text on Feb. 6, following the incidents.

The campaign disrupted the platform’s ecosystem, degraded user experience and amounted to harassment, WeChat said in a statement.

On Feb. 7, Qwen announced that its red envelope campaign would be extended through February.

Chinese New Year 2026, also known as the Lunar New Year, marks the Year of the Horse and begins Feb. 17.

Due to the travel rush for holiday inter-regional trips are expected to hit a record 9.5 billion, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.