Even before the New Year's Eve countdown commenced, the digital battlefield's smoke had already permeated every family's living room screen. On the eve of the 2026 Lunar New Year, a costly conflict quietly escalated. The familiar "red envelope war" persisted, but the central stage's protagonist had subtly shifted from mobile payment applications to ambitious AI assistants. Alibaba's "Qianwen" launched a 3-billion-yuan "Spring Festival Treat Plan," TENCENT's "Yuanbao" distributed 1 billion yuan in cash red envelopes, and Baidu's "Wenxin" joined the fray with 500 million yuan. Meanwhile, ByteDance participated in a more subtle yet deeper manner—by becoming the exclusive AI cloud partner for the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. A rough calculation shows that the marketing ammunition prepared by these giants for this Spring Festival already exceeded 4.5 billion yuan. While this "money-splashing" competition appears familiar on the surface, it is undergoing a complete genetic transformation internally. What these titans are truly competing for is no longer merely the small payment gateway in users' digital wallets, nor even the download numbers of a particular application. Their real wager is on the right to define the "super gateway" for how people will converse with machines and interact with the world in the next era. The core narrative of China's internet industry has thus officially shifted from the traffic involution of the mobile internet to the positioning and construction of an AI-native ecosystem.
The tipping point has arrived for a conflict that is unavoidable and must be launched at this precise moment. Why 2026? Why this particular Spring Festival? Behind the apparent coincidence lies an inevitability formed by the convergence of the technology adoption curve, market readiness, and competitive dynamics. The primary reason is that the user mindset has reached a critical saturation point requiring release. Data indicates that China's generative AI user base surpassed 500 million by mid-2025. This signifies that AI has completed its transition from a niche toy to a mainstream topic of conversation, now hovering on the threshold of "widespread adoption." The Spring Festival, being China's most attention-intensive national scenario featuring frequent intergenerational exchanges and heightened willingness to try new things, naturally becomes the optimal "pre-installation" opportunity for market education and habit formation. Each major player harbors the old dream of WeChat's 2015 red envelope campaign that leveraged the Spring Festival Gala to overtake Alipay, yearning to replicate that "miracle" of reshaping hundreds of millions of habits overnight.
Looking deeper, the lenient window for pure technology competition is rapidly narrowing. Observers note that the pace of technological revolution accelerates with each generation. During the personal computer era, leaders could enjoy over a decade of红利; the mobile internet era compressed this initial establishment period to about four years from the iPhone's launch; and in the AI era, this window may be even shorter. ByteDance's leader Liang Rubo's designation of Doubao as a "strategic high ground" that must be captured quickly, along with his candid admission that the "time window" waits for no one, is not an exaggeration. As each company's foundational model capabilities have crossed the "usable" threshold, pure technical parameter comparisons are giving way to the speed of ecosystem and scenario implementation. At this juncture, a high-intensity, user-saturation campaign serving as both a "pressure test" and a "mindshare grab" becomes the decisive move for establishing market leadership.
Although the battlefield is shrouded in smoke, the competitive landscape remains far from solidified. Leading AI applications may show disparities in user numbers, but they have not yet formed the formidable moats seen with platforms like WeChat or Taobao. The market remains in a chaotic adolescent phase where any player could potentially alter the competitive dynamics through a precise and powerful flanking attack. TENCENT's core leader Pony Ma's public acknowledgment of being "slow to move" in AI and his designation of it as the "only direction worth investing in" reflects this sense of imminent crisis and urgency to seize the window. Therefore, the high-stakes gamble of the 2026 Spring Festival represents a strategic决战 launched at the right time and place, with the clear objective of determining industry rankings for the next decade.
The chosen attack paths of the four heavyweight contenders reveal fascinating divergences, serving as a public exhibition of corporate DNA. Alibaba's approach carries the weight of its "commercial empire" heritage. Its record-breaking 3-billion-yuan "Treat Plan" is not merely about splashing cash but involves intricately weaving red envelopes into its vast commercial ecosystem. The campaign connects nearly all core businesses including Taobao, Fliggy, Freshippo, and Amap, with the slogan directly targeting "endless free treats for dining, travel, and entertainment." The underlying logic is clear and assertive: they aim to demonstrate that Qianwen is no longer just a chatbot for casual conversation but an intelligent hub capable of handling real tasks. From "ordering takeout with a single command" to "directly booking flights and hotels," Alibaba attempts to extend AI's value from information generation to transaction fulfillment, completing the commercial loop from "dialogue" to "action." This represents a classic "industrial penetration" strategy, leveraging its deep B2B infrastructure and commercial ecosystem to build a moat centered on transactions and data in the consumer market. If successful, Alibaba would transform AI into a natural extension of its commercial operating system.
TENCENT's choice is deeply imprinted with the muscle memory of the "social networking king." The design of Yuanbao's 1-billion-yuan red envelope campaign replicates that decisive night eleven years ago: red envelopes go directly to WeChat Change, and dissemination relies entirely on viral spread through WeChat and QQ relationship chains. The intention is unmistakable—they seek to recreate that "Normandy moment" of overnight disruption through social leverage. TENCENT's power lies in its ability to activate China's largest and most active social network at the lowest cost. After the campaign launch, Yuanbao red envelope links spread like wildfire through countless WeChat groups, even prompting some user complaints about "group chats turning into task boards," which ironically signifies the strategy's success. However, TENCENT's real challenge lies not in external user acquisition but in internal evolution: how to complete the AI transformation of its entire ecosystem without compromising the user experience of WeChat, the "national-level application." Its internal testing of the "Yuanbao Pai" feature, which attempts to create a social subspace where AI and real users coexist within group chats, represents a crucial experiment in atomizing AI capabilities and injecting them into social DNA.
ByteDance's tactics reflect the radical nature of the "disruptor." Instead of engaging in direct confrontation over cash red envelope amounts, it took a different approach by securing the more symbolic high ground as the "CCTV Spring Festival Gala Exclusive AI Cloud Partner." Providing underlying support through Volcano Engine and enabling Doubao's deep involvement in program interactions amounts to a nationwide "roadshow" of technical credibility. But ByteDance's ambitions extend far beyond mere app exposure. Its strategy is to "capture every possible entry point," from the "Doubao Phone Assistant" attempting to become an OS-level intelligent agent to rumored AI hardware, ByteDance is deploying an "omnipresent Doubao." This "system-level" route is particularly dangerous because it attempts to bypass existing app store rules to become the fundamental intermediary between users and the digital world. This inevitably creates friction concerning boundaries, privacy, and control with super-apps like WeChat and Alipay. For ByteDance, the Spring Festival Gala serves both as a coming-of-age ceremony for its technical capabilities and a crucial vote for gaining public trust for its broader ecosystem blueprint.
Baidu's path reveals the unique considerations of the "veteran search giant." Rather than aggressively promoting a standalone application, it seamlessly embedded the 500-million-yuan red envelope campaign into the Baidu App, which boasts over 700 million monthly active users. Users can naturally activate the Wenxin assistant and participate in the activity next to the traditional search box without additional downloads. This "seamless migration" strategy aims to smoothly transition the massive user base and habits accumulated during the search era into the AI era, consolidating its position as the primary gateway for "search + AI" information acquisition. Simultaneously, by becoming the AI partner for Beijing TV's Spring Festival Gala and introducing numerous AI creative features, Baidu demonstrates its multimodal capabilities in entertainment scenarios to attract broader and younger user demographics.
After the New Year's Eve bell tolls and the red envelope shower subsides, the real competition is just beginning. The essence of this war has long transcended the shallow waters of traffic acquisition, moving into the deep waters of ecosystem positioning. The competitive focus is shifting from laboratory "technology horse races" to real-world "scenario bayonet combat." The evaluation criteria are no longer cold benchmark scores but rather which platform can integrate more services and solve more concrete problems. Consequently, we see Alibaba consolidating its internal commercial landscape, TENCENT exploring social scenario reconstruction, ByteDance布局 hardware and system foundations, and Baidu connecting external services through open protocols. The future battle for AI gateways will inevitably become a comprehensive contest of ecosystem richness, openness, and协同 efficiency.
The ultimate test that follows is the age-old and brutal challenge of "user retention." History repeatedly demonstrates that users attracted through subsidies exhibit loyalty as stable as quicksand. After the Spring Festival狂欢, the cliff facing all players is how to prevent users from "leaving immediately after claiming rewards." This explains why each company's campaign design千方百计 induces users to engage in genuine, repeated interactions with AI—they attempt to use the high-intensity usage period of the Spring Festival to forcibly "compile" new user behavior habits. However, transforming AI from a "festival toy" to an "everyday tool" depends on whether it provides the social necessity of WeChat or the consumption convenience of Taobao, something far beyond what a marketing blitz can guarantee.
Ultimately, all the喧嚣 will return to the essence of business: sustainability. Currently, mainstream AI applications remain in the capital-intensive "transfusion" stage. Finding a healthy business model—whether through subscriptions, enterprise services, or transaction commissions—remains the suspended Damocles' sword for the entire industry. After the risky leap of user acquisition during the Spring Festival money-burning war, the next profound challenge facing the giants is how to convert traffic into long-term value, a problem more complex and deeper than holiday marketing itself.
The 2026 Spring Festival AI狂欢 represents a concentrated exhibition of collective anxiety and strategic choices among China's internet giants on the eve of an era transition. Alibaba, TENCENT, ByteDance, and Baidu, following trajectories predetermined by their respective genetic blueprints, have committed heavy resources to charge toward the same vague yet enormous future gateway. The final outcome of this battle will not be revealed amidst the Lantern Festival lights. The true victor may not be the one with the most impressive New Year's Eve data, but rather the player who, in the long ordinary days following the festivities, can seamlessly integrate AI technology into the fabric of hundreds of millions of users' lives like air, and on this foundation, construct a truly prosperous, stable, and vibrant new ecosystem.
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