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China Expands Its Global AI Power
China has already created significant spheres of influence in the global competition over artificial intelligence. This is particularly evident in Russia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, according to a new analysis by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.
In the Philippines, Chinese AI chat providers such as DeepSeek already account for a 47 percent market share on Android devices; in Indonesia and Peru, the figure is 38 percent, and in Mexico, 30 percent. In Russia and Belarus, where U.S. services such as ChatGPT are unavailable or only available to a limited extent, Chinese apps even outperform their American competitors.
The analysis by technology expert Dr. Valentin Weber for the Naumann Foundation’s Global Innovation Hub in Taiwan is based on downloads of selected AI chat apps from the Google Play Store. According to the analysis, European providers play virtually no role in this race.
The spread of Chinese AI apps is creating new strategic dependencies. Whoever controls the most widely used AI applications in a market can influence access to information, data flows, and digital business processes.
Study author Weber points to the case in which China’s DeepSeek is said to have generated faulty code for IT projects related to Tibet. This makes clear that AI systems can do more than merely reproduce political guidelines in their answers. They can also affect technical results, software functions, and practical applications. “The ability to exercise power through AI apps is amplified by the opacity of chatbots. They are true black boxes,” says study author Weber.
In absolute terms, U.S. providers such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, and Meta AI remain far ahead, with a total of 1.35 billion downloads. However, Chinese providers such as Dola, DeepSeek, and Qwen have already reached 205.41 million downloads and are catching up quickly. Dola, the chatbot from TikTok parent company ByteDance, has been particularly successful. With 144 million downloads, Dola is far ahead of the once-popular DeepSeek, which has 58 million downloads.
The rapid rise is largely based on massive advertising campaigns on social media, including TikTok, which is also owned by ByteDance. In Mexico alone, the company ran more than 400 different ads in October 2025.
By contrast, the European app Vibe, previously known as LeChat, from Mistral has reached only 1.26 million downloads and plays hardly any role internationally. The study warns Europe about the security risks of Chinese open-source models, on which parts of the European and American startup ecosystem are based. It recommends that the EU forge alliances with AI middle powers such as South Korea and Canada in order to compensate for weaknesses in frontier models. Europe should also prepare for the upcoming race in embodied AI — that is, AI for robots and machines. Thanks to its strength in robotics, the continent is better positioned here than in previous AI cycles. The app ecosystem for controlling robots and devices will also determine market shares.
About the Author of the Study
Dr. Valentin Weber is a Senior Research Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). He currently leads the “China’s AI Exports” project, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office. Previously, he led the “Norms in Cyberspace” project. Weber is also a China Foresight Associate at LSE IDEAS, the foreign policy think tank of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
About the Global Innovation Hub of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom
The Global Innovation Hub in Taipei of the German publicly funded Friedrich Naumann Foundation analyzes the interaction between politics and technology. One focus of its work is how democracies can hold their ground against authoritarian systems in the digital space. The Naumann Foundation has close links to Germany’s liberal party FDP.
Contact:
Valentin Weber, Study Author
+ 49 30 254 231 232
Frederic Spohr, Head of Global Innovation Hub Taiwan, Friedrich Naumann Foundation
+49 177 690 1160