The Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce (FCCC) organized a webinar on AI-Driven Digital Ecosystems: Lessons from China's Innovation Practices on 26 February 2026. Ms. Gwenn Sonck, Executive Director, Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce (FCCC), welcomed the participants to the webinar and introduced the speaker. What are the lessons learned from China's innovation practices? In many areas, we need to look more and more at China to see what we can learn from them and to be more the student rather than the professor. Mr. Bo Ji, Chief Representative for Europe and Assistant Dean of China’s leading business school, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, has been a regular speaker at our Chamber. Artificial intelligence is no longer a supporting technology, it is becoming the core infrastructure of competitive advantage. Leading companies are moving beyond isolated digital initiatives toward fully integrated AI-driven ecosystems that enable scale, speed, and exponential growth. In several areas, such as artificial intelligence, electrical vehicles, renewable energy, digital payments, and high-speed rail, China has become a leader in innovation. China accounts for the largest share of global AI patent applications with around 60% to 70% worldwide. Being present in China makes us more competitive and innovative. Chinese customers are also driving EU companies to be faster in the local market and globally.
Mr. Bo Ji said the school has 25,000 alumni, more than 50% Chairman or CEOs, and also 151 unicorn companies that graduated from the school. AI is becoming core infrastructure and industry, business and political leaders, are embracing it at high speed. AI is moving from nice to have to must have. The winners use AI to make decisions continuously. I personally have to use it on a daily basis and we find it very useful. Most people are using some basic AI, for instance, ChatGPT, a large language model to help you deal with knowledge sharing. But people are also using it for generating pictures and photos. People are using AI agents to help them to really deal with tasks instead of using human beings. McKinsey published a report, saying that 88% of the organizations now use AI in at least one function, but most companies are still stuck in experimentation and pilot mode. Companies are really fast in adapting to it, but the majority of companies actually don't invest overly in terms of understanding AI, how to really apply that to their business, how to gain competitive advantage, how to make sure they can still survive in the age of AI. Many companies are actually experimenting with AI. It is a way to beat up the competition, and if you do not embrace it fast enough, you may be out of the game.
The area where AI is already changing organizations the most is improved innovation. AI can help to generate more disruptive innovations. In China, AI has been used to do medical research to help find new medicines. About 45% of companies report improved customer satisfaction with the help of AI. The U.S. is leading in large language models (LLMs), but China is following very closely. China has a lot of players, led by DeepSeek last year, which created a worldwide disruption, and also Alibaba's Qwen and Baidu (Ernie) and Tencent. In Europe, we have Mistral AI, developed by the French, and Aleph Alpha, developed by Germany. In terms of investment, you see the U.S. leading the curve with USD70 billion to USD90 billion in AI funding, while China has USD40 billion to USD50 billion, including state and private funding, although it is probably much higher.
The U.S. is mainly focused on cloud dominance, while China is more focused on the super app ecosystem and hardware integration, which is a more practical approach. Europe is showing industrial AI in a segmented market due to the different regulations. In terms of AI strategy focus, the U.S. is more focused on disruptive AI discovery and language models, while China is more focussed on AI integration into the consumer industry ecosystem. Europe, as always, is more focussed on regulation-led industrial applications. But over-regulation sometimes makes innovation very difficult to flourish. China is adopting a different strategy, which is they regulate to some extent, but then let commercialization detect potential issues and loopholes that can be fixed, which is a much more pragmatic approach. On the one hand, facilitate innovation, and on the other, provide a regulation framework for that. The U.S. focus is on foundation models and the venture ecosystem, while China focusses more on ecosystem integration plus scale of adoption. AI requires a lot of electricity. In the U.S., the ability to generate electricity is limited, while China's electricity grid is very advanced, including the power transmission.
What is an AI driven digital ecosystem? A connective system of products, platforms and partners, and data sharing. Without data, AI cannot do anything. The data is not just about digits, but also about information, about relationships and logic. You start with experiments and small AI use, and then you go to scale, shared data, reputable development, and then AI-native, which is based on the decision automated end-to-end solution. So, where is your company today? Most perhaps are somewhere between one and two. You can move up the scale by creating the position of Chief AI Ecosystem Officer. Data is a strategic asset, it is the new oil. Data creates advantages when it is usable, connected, and timely. Real-time data enable real-time decision makers. The best ecosystem connects customers and operational data. Without data, we cannot do anything. So, we are in the age of data.
Now we'll talk about some cases. First Alibaba and Ant Group. Jack Ma, who founded Alibaba, is actually one of Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business alumnis. He's all about value innovation, about how you can serve your customer better, how you can create value for your customer. Ecosystem is commerce plus payment, plus logistics and cloud. Alibaba is very good at building an ecosystem. Customers who are on the e-commerce platform also use Alipay for payments and Cainiao for logistics. Alibaba also has Alicloud, which is the largest cloud service platform. Now, Alibaba has Qwen, which is a large language model. Customers use multiple platforms, but there is one thing in common, that is the data. Chinese regulation is not as rigid as in Europe in terms of data protection. As long as you don't use data for bad things but to enhance the consumer's benefit, then you're good. The ecosystem learns and improves continuously. Without the AI ecosystem, individual merchants manually set the price, but with the Alibaba AI ecosystem, AI can predict which product will trade and the platform will automatically recommend the product to relevant consumers. Ads are optimized in real time, inventory alerts prevent stock-out, and the logistic system reduces delivery time. Merchants are no longer operating alone, they're plugged into a shared intelligence network. Alibaba was able to leverage AI to provide credit of as little as CNY100. If you want to lend €15, they're able to do that because they have this AI capability to analyze, to see your behavior, and they will understand the risks they will have. Some of the lenders just need to borrow money for a day or two. Alibaba is able to give loans in real time and for a small amount and duration. For a lot of people like small business owners, this is much needed. Step one is data generation, then AI processing, intelligent execution, and finally the feedback loops. Alibaba AI cloud is one of the two long term strategic pillars. They announced a USD50 billion multi-year investment in AI and cloud infrastructure. In fiscal year 2025, the cloud intelligence group revenue increased by 11% year-on-year. Ant Group's quarterly profit dropped 60% early in 2025 due to technology investment, but then grew 10% year-on-year after increased AI capability.
Case study two: Tencent. Tencent has a super app, WeChat plus WeChat Pay, many programs and services, and AI increased engagement and support. Tencent, is working with third parties to build much bigger platforms. The core loops are user behavior, AI optimization, better experiments, more engagement, more data and better AI. Tencent's revenue reached CNY90 billion. Their fintech segment remains a major profit contributor and AI is embedded across cloud gaming, advertising and payments. The core strengths are algorithms, intelligence and experimentation. Everybody knows TikTok, a Chinese app that actually went to the West and became dominant. This is the first time ever in the history of China that a Chinese social media went viral outside of China, and to a point that President Donald Trump even tried to shut it down or buy it, just like buying Greenland. Huawei is also an ecosystem-driven company. They have devices, telecom, cloud, and enterprise solutions. They even have a car now.
JD.com is able to deliver products very fast. The fastest was seven minutes from the time the consumer placed the order to the time the consumer received the product, because they are able to predict in a certain area and time period that a certain product will become more popular. They have the product preloaded into the delivery truck. So they are able to really deliver instantaneously to consumers. In China, logistics have become very important. JD.com has its own delivery system. That's why their delivery service is much faster and also more consumer friendly, because they pay their workers much better as well. BYD has real time production optimization. BYD in 2025 generated CNY115 billion, and they have sold 4.6 million new energy vehicle, which is much more than Tesla. They're the number one EV producer and seller in the world.
We have a program called Asia Star. It's an AI plus digital China expedition. The next edition is from May 11 to 14 in Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Shenzhen. We will have lectures, in-depth AI digital insights, and exclusive AI tech company visits, including BYD, Alibaba, Tencent, and Unitrix Robotics, which is the number one robotic company in China. The participation fee is GBP5,980. Already about 20 people have signed up and there are only 25 places available. Mr. Bo Ji will lead the group.This is the 14th edition of the program.
A Q&A session concluded the webinar. Q.: Do you have examples of European companies using and or integrating with the Chinese ecosystem through their subsidiaries in China? Bo JI: There are a lot of European companies who are using Alicloud. DeepSeek has already been quite widely used in Europe. Q.: We see a lot of investment from China into AI. So who's winning the race? The U.S., China? Bo Ji: China is going extremely fast and doing extremely well. Every five years, the Chinese government has an economic plan and provides economic incentives. They set up a national strategy to focus on AI, new energy, and quantum mechanics. China will go faster than America, which is more market-led. In this wave of AI development, China will certainly gain its place and momentum, particularly in terms of AI application to real businesses. But the U.S. is very good at disruptive AI. They're generating super intelligent AIs.
