'AI milk tea' a taste of new smart economy

Global push

Chinese-developed open-source LLMs accounted for 17.1 percent of global downloads over the past year, surpassing the US, at 15.8 percent, for the first time, according to a joint report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Hugging Face.

Models such as DeepSeek's V3 and Moonshot AI's Kimi K2 have driven a surge in adoption, together representing nearly 30 percent of global usage of open-source LLMs this year, the report said.

Wei Kai, head of the AI research institute at the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said the data reflected "a systemic upgrade in China's overall AI capabilities".

"This is not a single breakthrough," Wei said. "It is the result of sustained investment, open ecosystems and the ability to integrate models with real-world scenarios at scale."

Consultancy PwC estimates that AI could contribute $7 trillion to China's GDP by 2030. Market consultancy CCID Consulting projects China's AI industry will grow from 398.5 billion yuan in 2025 to more than 1.7 trillion yuan by 2035.

"China's AI companies are also going global. They have moved beyond the simple export of products or services. Instead, they are enabling the intelligent upgrading of local industrial chains through technology empowerment," Wei said.

Chinese companies such as Alibaba and Huawei have been promoting open-source AI models across Africa, targeting startups and innovation hubs. Freely available and modifiable, these models allow developers to build products without paying high licensing fees.

That approach contrasts sharply with that of OpenAI and most US companies, whose AI ecosystems are largely proprietary — with software, training data and algorithms tightly controlled by parent firms and monetized through paid access.

While global attention has focused on Western technology companies competing for lucrative enterprise contracts in the US and the Middle East, a different strategy has been adopted by their Chinese counterparts.

In Africa, the digital economy is estimated to be about $180 billion — a fraction of OpenAI's roughly $500 billion valuation in recent equity deals.

In such an emerging market, Huawei and ZTE have supplied much of Africa's data centers, 5G and fiber-optic network equipment. Further down the technology stack, Transsion Holdings accounts for much of Africa's smartphone market, with Xiaomi and Honor gaining ground, while TikTok ranks among the continent's most downloaded apps.

In the Middle East, Chinese companies are integrating AI with the internet of things in national projects such as the UAE's Smart Dubai initiative, helping build efficient resource management and urban security systems in desert environments.

In Southeast Asia, industrial vision inspection and predictive maintenance solutions provided by Chinese AI firms are already being deployed in electronics and auto-parts factories in Vietnam and Thailand.

"These practices create commercial value, but more importantly, they improve quality of life, enhance social resilience and push inclusive technology adoption on a global scale," Wei said.