“Global Times” editorial: When “Double Eleven” starts “token hoarding”, times have changed

When ordinary Chinese consumers take the lead in embracing artificial intelligence (AI) and enjoy the convenience of “hoarding tokens” in e-commerce live broadcast rooms, and when “intelligent manufacturing in China” such as humanoid robots and green manufacturing become the new shining business card of China’s modernization, more and more Western media and scholars sincerely believe that “the future is in China.”

This year’s “Double Eleven”, Chinese consumers have a new product in their shopping carts—Token. Tmall and JD.com have respectively opened special areas for word units, and Alibaba Cloud, DeepSeek, Dark Side of the Moon, Zhipu, etc. have entered the area one after another. In one live broadcast room, a sales record of 2 trillion word units was even set in half an hour. Ciyuan has become one of the main products of e-commerce, and it is probably only available in China in the world today. In this regard, foreign media found it novel and even more amazed.

Once upon a time, when Americans were driving cars, watching TV, and eating fried chicken, the mainstream “four big items” in Chinese families were watches, bicycles, sewing machines, and radios. It was not until the late 1970s that televisions, refrigerators, and washing machines began to enter a small number of households. At that time, the power to define “modern life” was in the West, and the world thought that was the future. What we are catching up with is the pace of industrialization, turning industrial products that have been popularized by others into daily necessities that every household can have. No one would have thought that in a few decades, China would be at the forefront of the world in the popularity of smart terminals, mobile payments, and digital services. No one could have predicted that we would become the party defining new consumption, new standards, and even new lifestyles in the implementation of a new round of digital technology.

The same goes for digital technology. A new digital product is often first defined in Silicon Valley and then slowly spread to the world. But today Ciyuan is on the shelves during Double Eleven, breaking this path that has lasted for many years. It is no longer a replica of a new overseas concept or model in China, but a new consumption form jointly spawned by China’s huge digital consumer market, active user groups and mature industrial ecology.

A few years ago, many Western public opinion still habitually questioned China’s digital innovation, believing that we could only make improvements at the application level and could not find our own way in the underlying technical logic. However, from the rapid popularization of open source large models, to the gradual implementation of embodied intelligent robots in industrial scenarios, to today’s digital elements directly entering the mass consumer market, what the world sees is an innovative highland that can continuously define new needs and create new scenarios. When ordinary Chinese consumers take the lead in embracing AI and enjoy the convenience of “hoarding tokens” in e-commerce live broadcast rooms, when humanoid robots, green manufacturing and other “Intelligent Made in China” become the new shining business card of China’s modernization, more and more Western media and scholars sincerely believe that “the future is in China.”

At present, AI not only directly drives the consumption of smart terminals and related hardware, but “artificial intelligence +” also deeply empowers education, medical care, elderly care, cultural tourism, employment, consumption and other fields. When AI enters thousands of households and empowers thousands of industries, a more competitive AI consumption ecosystem will bring more affordable words and richer application scenarios. This is inseparable from China’s rapid development in AI basic models, cloud computing, and chip application ecology.

In the global competition of AI, China is forming a unique competitive advantage. According to statistics from the global AI model aggregation platform OpenRouter, from October 26 to November 1, the number of terminology calls for large models in China has exceeded that of the United States for 27 consecutive weeks; more than 1/3 of the terminology used by enterprises in the Global South comes from Chinese models. The winner of the AI ​​competition increasingly depends on whether we can continue to provide reliable and practical intelligent services to enterprises and consumers at reasonable costs, and whether we can transform technological progress into production efficiency in thousands of industries.

Why did China first form a word consumption ecology? The answer is simple: high public acceptance accelerates the formation of an ecology, and a mature ecology further strengthens the public’s positive attitude. A 2025 KPMG survey of 47 countries showed that Chinese people are among the most optimistic about AI. From electronic payments to e-commerce and takeout, from short videos to smart driving, to the use of cost-effective word elements, Chinese people are undoubtedly at the forefront of the world in enjoying the smart era. Such a positive and cyclical ecology is the inevitable result of the substantial leap in China’s comprehensive national strength and the comprehensive improvement of national cultural quality over the past few decades.

From the “four big things” and “three big things” to today’s digital elements entering daily consumption, the Chinese people’s pursuit of a better life has never changed. What has changed is our ability and method to realize this pursuit. Today we are turning the possibilities of a new round of digital civilization into real experiences that benefit billions of people around the world. This change is not accompanied by any plundering or building walls, but comes from the practice of allowing ordinary people to enjoy the dividends of technology equally and truly.