GenAI adoption is rapidly rising across Asia-Pacific, but the drivers differ widely by market. Government policy, homegrown AI ecosystems, demographics, and digital infrastructure are shaping distinct adoption paths in China, India, Japan, and South Korea.

An AI everywhere policy drives AI adoption in China

The number of monthly genAI users in China is expected to increase 21.1% to 545.6 million in 2026, accounting for 50.1% of the country’s internet users and 38.8% of its population, per our forecast. AI is a cornerstone of the country’s economic strategy: The government’s AI+ action plan aims for AI-integrated intelligent hardware and genAI adoption rates of more than 70% by 2027 and more than 90% by 2030.

The launch of DeepSeek’s R1 in January 2025 was a turning point for China’s AI industry. Its open-weight reasoning model performed close to the world’s leading AI models, helping accelerate consumer adoption of genAI. Adoption has been further driven by other homegrown AI models, such as ByteDance’s Doubao, Alibaba’s Qwen, and Tencent’s Yuanbao, which have been pursuing deep AI integrations into their vast ecosystems. (Western models are effectively inaccessible to the general public.)

In addition, an aggressive price war among large language models (LLMs) accelerated adoption by making the technology more affordable for developers to build into consumer-facing apps, encouraging companies to compete on user experience and enabling consumers to experiment freely. Public sentiment in China is overwhelmingly positive: According to 2025 Ipsos data cited in a Stanford University report, 84% of respondents said they’re excited about products and services using AI.