Alibaba, Tencent, and DeepSeek deploy permissively licensed AI models amid Beijing’s strategic push, challenging Western dominance through developer adoption and government-subsidized infrastructure.
Chinese tech firms are flooding global markets with free-to-use AI models through strategic open-source releases, countering US platform dominance while advancing Beijing’s technology self-sufficiency goals.
Strategic Open-Source Deployment
Alibaba Cloud made waves on 25 June 2024 by releasing its Qwen2-72B large language model under Apache 2.0 licensing, outperforming Meta’s Llama 3-70B in Chinese comprehension benchmarks according to C-Eval results. Tencent followed this week by embedding its Hunyuan AI into workplace platforms Tencent Docs and WeCom, potentially reaching 300 million enterprise users.
DeepSeek’s R1 architecture, published on GitHub on 20 June with MIT licensing, has been forked 832 times within 72 hours – signaling strong developer interest. Company filings reveal 15,000+ commercial implementations already registered through its API gateway.
Policy-Driven Adoption
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) committed $2.1 billion in computing vouchers on 23 June to subsidize small businesses adopting open-source AI solutions. This follows Beijing’s 18 June ‘Artificial Intelligence Plus’ action plan requiring 30% open-source software adoption in public technology projects by 2025.
Stanford University’s 2024 AI Index shows China released 65 open-source models last quarter versus America’s 28. Counterpoint Research analyst Wei Sun noted: ‘This isn’t charity – it’s standards warfare through developer mindshare.’
Global Ecosystem Implications
DeepSeek’s permissive licensing allows commercial use without royalties, contrasting with OpenAI’s subscription model. Business Insider analysis suggests Chinese OSS models now power 48% of new global AI projects, based on June arXiv research.
However, US export controls on AI chips complicate deployment. Alibaba’s Qwen2 documentation explicitly supports Huawei’s Ascend 910B processors as domestic alternatives to Nvidia hardware.
Historical Context: Digital Payment Precedent
China’s open-source AI surge mirrors its 2010s mobile payment revolution. When Alipay and WeChat Pay achieved 85% market penetration by 2018, they established technical standards that sidelined Western competitors like Visa and PayPal in China.
Just as those systems enabled China’s e-commerce boom, today’s AI licensing strategy aims to position Chinese firms as infrastructure providers for emerging markets. MIIT’s voucher program specifically targets Southeast Asian and African developers through regional cloud partnerships.
