As the Lunar New Year marketing battle heats up, Alibaba said on Monday it will spend 3 billion yuan ($431 million) to attract users to its Qwen AI app during the festive period. This move intensifies competition among China’s top tech companies.

The campaign, which begins on 6th February, is three times the size of similar spending announced earlier by rivals Tencent and Baidu. Moreover, Alibaba said the push will include incentives for food, beverages, entertainment, and leisure. Additionally, there will be continuous distribution of digital “red envelopes.”

Earlier, Tencent and Baidu had announced plans to spend 1 billion yuan and 500 million yuan, respectively, on promotions for their AI chatbots. Chinese tech firms have traditionally used the Lunar New Year holiday—a peak travel and spending period—as a key window to acquire new users.

Competition in China’s AI space has intensified since the launch of DeepSeek’s R1 model in January last year. This move accelerated adoption and heightened rivalry. The public holiday this year begins on 15th February and will last nine days. This is longer than in most previous years.

Meanwhile, Tencent’s campaign for its Yuanbao chatbot starts this week, offering digital red envelopes that can be withdrawn via WeChat wallets. However, Alibaba has not clarified whether its rewards will be distributed as cash. Alternatively, the rewards may be discount coupons on platforms such as Taobao.

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