The narrative around #🇨🇳 ChinA.I. 🤖🧠🦾🤖 is shifting. After spending the past year building increasingly sophisticated AI models, China’s tech giants are moving to the next stage of the competition: consumer-facing “super apps”. This week, Alibaba Group Holding officially launched Qwen, a multipurpose AI consumer app designed to rival Tencent Holdings’s WeChat. While WeChat defined the mobile internet age in China, Alibaba appears to be betting that Qwen will define the AI era. Qwen isn't just a chatbot; it’s designed to be an "everything app" that handles personal and professional tasks like research and image generation. While still in beta testing, it shot to fourth place on the Hong Kong App Store and fifth in mainland China charts. Western tech circles are taking notice. As marketing specialist Tulsi Soni noted: “Silicon Valley doesn’t want to admit it, but the symptoms are obvious: we’re witnessing a full-blown Qwen panic.” The move appears to be rooted in Alibaba’s ecosystem strategy. Unlike rival chatbots, Qwen – available free of charge – is integrated into the company’s massive web of payments, maps and shopping services. "By leveraging user understanding, the app can quickly turn conversations into business transactions,” explained Poe Zhao, founder of the Hello China Tech newsletter. “If Alibaba gets this right, it could set the standard for agentic AI in consumer applications. Not just in China, but globally." Not to be outdone, Ant Group, Alibaba’s fintech affiliate, unveiled LingGuang, a new tool that allows ordinary users to generate simple "flash apps" – like a calorie tracker or a game – using natural language prompts, sometimes in as little as 30 seconds. "LingGuang is bringing every user their own personal AI developer: someone who can code, create visuals, build apps and turn complex ideas into simple solutions – right in your pocket," said He Zhengyu, Ant Group’s tech chief. While developing AI can be extremely costly, the technology is starting to become a revenue engine for Chinese companies focused on practical applications. https://www.scmp.com/tech..