China holds an edge over the US when it comes to getting artificial intelligence applications into the hands of everyday users, according to tech executives and investors, though they warn that Chinese AI firms are looking increasingly overvalued.

China still lagged in computing power but was only “100 days behind” the US in frontier AI model capabilities, according to Chi Zhang, general manager of finance industry at the Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group, speaking on Thursday at the 2026 HKEX Future Tech Summit in Shenzhen, hosted by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing.

But the country’s biggest advantages and potential lie in AI applications thanks to its vast number of entrepreneurs and engineers, as well as its current stage of economic development, Zhang said during a panel discussion.

Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Lixue Xia, co-founder and CEO of Infinigence AI, a Shanghai-based AI computing service provider, said that in a race towards artificial general intelligence (AGI), China’s huge growth potential would be driven by sectors such as energy, infrastructure buildout and its open-source ecosystem.

The executives’ remarks come amid increasingly fierce competition between the world’s two leading AI powers. Chinese labs have in recent months unveiled new proprietary and open-source models that trail closely behind those from US peers such as OpenAI and Anthropic in capabilities. Their ability to maintain a lower cost has led some US firms to swap to Chinese vendors such as DeepSeek.