Gen Z drives China’s premium digital spend via AI
Combined with higher emotional spending and content payment rates, Gen Z's GenAI adoption rate of 71.4% sits 34.8 percentage points above China's national average.
261M Gen Z consumers represent 27.2% of China’s digital consumption base.
Gen Z GenAI adoption stands at 71.4%, a 34.8 percentage point gap above the 36.5% overall average.
49% of Gen Z consumers spend for emotional value, versus 33.4% across all age groups.
Content payment rates among Gen Z exceed overall averages across gaming, video, and music.
Brands deploying AI for personalization will outperform those focused on efficiency.
China’s Gen Z cohort was born between 1995 and 2009. They entered the internet as mobile-native users. They are now entering the AI era as the most digitally fluent demographic in the country’s consumer market.
At 261M active digital consumers, they represent 27.2% of China’s entire digital consumption base, according to CNNIC’s Digital Consumption Development Report for 2025.
The CNNIC report is based on a 30,000-respondent telephone survey across 31 provinces. It provides the most granular publicly available dataset on Chinese consumer digital behavior.
Its Gen Z findings are notable for their consistency across categories. Across GenAI adoption, emotional spending, smart product purchasing, and content payment rates, Gen Z systematically outperforms the overall average.
The pattern describes a consumer cohort that has upgraded not just the channels through which it spends, but the reasons and logic by which it spends.
The AI adoption gap that defines the cohort
The single most strategically significant number in the CNNIC Gen Z data is the GenAI adoption gap. 71.4% of Gen Z consumers use generative AI, against a 36.5% overall average. The 34.8 percentage point difference is the largest cohort divide in the report.
This gap is not simply a function of age or technology access. Older millennials in China have comparable smartphone penetration and internet access. The difference is behavioral.
Gen Z has adopted GenAI as a functional layer in daily decision-making, including product research, content discovery, and purchase decisions.
Before AI-powered search, product discovery on Chinese e-commerce platforms relied on keyword input, sponsored rankings, and social referrals. Gen Z consumers using Taobao’s AI Wan Neng Sou or Xiaohongshu’s AI recommendation layer interact with platforms through intent expression rather than keyword entry. They describe what they want in natural language, upload images for visual search, and receive curated outputs shaped by their behavioral history.
The implication for platform operators is direct. A user cohort that has adopted AI-mediated discovery at 71.4% penetration will find non-AI interfaces increasingly inadequate.
The barrier is not financial. It is experiential. A Gen Z consumer who has used an AI-powered interface for six months has already calibrated their expectations upward. Returning to keyword search feels like a regression.
Smart products and the hardware preference signal
Gen Z’s technology spending extends beyond software. 59.3% of Gen Z consumers bought smart products online in H1 2025, compared to 45% across all age groups. The 14.3 percentage point gap reflects a cohort that treats AI-enabled hardware as a default rather than a premium.
