In its race to lead critical emerging technologies, China is working to expand adoption of its AI models and standards in the Global South. The Wire China looks at three very different countries in Southeast Asia to assess its progress.
Illustration by Sam Ward
The long corridors in Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport display billboard after billboard from Chinese tech giants Huawei and Alibaba, advertising their AI models and partnerships with Indonesian companies.
An ad for Alibaba's Qwen AI model in the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. Image provided by author.
Four years ago U.S. models accounted for 60 percent of downloads on Hugging Face, a major online hub for open-source models; by November 2025 they accounted for just 1
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