Overview
- The campaign starts February 6 with incentives for dining, drinks, entertainment and leisure, featuring large digital red envelopes distributed continuously.
- Alibaba’s outlay triples rivals’ plans, topping Tencent’s 1 billion yuan and Baidu’s 500 million yuan promotions for their AI apps.
- Qwen will anchor promotions across Alibaba’s ecosystem, linking the AI assistant to services such as shopping, travel, ticketing and local retail to drive spending.
- Alibaba has not said whether rewards will be cash red envelopes or coupons redeemable on platforms like Taobao.
- The push comes as AI competition intensifies in China, with DeepSeek’s next model reportedly expected in mid-February and the Lunar New Year period serving as a key user-acquisition battleground.