For Chinese New Year 2026, China’s tech giants launched an aggressive “red packet war,” using festive giveaways to compete for user attention and accelerate AI adoption.
Unique this year? The red packet campaigns are tied to LLM adoption. Alibaba offering over US$400 million in red packet giveaways via its cutting-edge Qwen model.
In my view, offering generous red packets is a smart user acquisition strategy because the Chinese New Year holiday is one of the highest-traffic periods of the year, with hundreds of millions of people travelling and engaging with digital platforms.
This pattern is reminiscent of earlier cycles in Chinese tech history where holiday red-packet mechanics helped define market leadership — for example, WeChat’s red envelope push helped accelerate WeChat Pay adoption over a decade ago. What’s different now is that the battleground is not payments or short-form video but next-generation AI infrastructure and user engagement. Large language models are being positioned as foundational platforms for search, productivity, content creation, social interaction, and commerce, meaning whoever captures early mindshare gains a strategic edge.
In terms of effectiveness, these promotions are very effective at driving awareness and initial downloads. The scale of the giveaways and festive integration naturally generate buzz, installs, and first-time trials. The companies are hoping that users find real, ongoing value in these AI applications beyond the holiday hook.
Long-term, this phenomenon points to a few key trends in China’s AI industry: first, that user base land-grab tactics still matter in early product cycles; second, that holiday periods are now seen as strategic launch windows; and third, that the companies best positioned to “stick” their AI user funnels are those that combine promotional energy with genuine utility, integration across ecosystems, and clear use cases. The current wave of model launches and red packet campaigns suggests that China’s tech giants are looking to do exactly that.
