China's Emerging AI Landscape and the Digital Marketplace

 Anxious Chinese students are trusting AI to help pick colleges and majors

Alibaba, ByteDance, Baidu, and Tencent guide hundreds of millions of high-school grads to optimize the high-stakes university match system.

By VIOLA ZHOU, 29 JULY 2026

• Chinese high school graduates are turning to free AI chatbots to navigate the college admission process.
• The automated tools are disrupting a costly private counseling market by offering highly utilitarian, job-focused major recommendations.
• Despite the convenience, students must cross-check AI suggestions to avoid database errors that could ruin their matching chances.

After taking part in China’s grueling national college entrance exam, Guo Xinyan has three weeks to make what could be the most important decision of her life: which universities and programs she should apply to. The 18-year-old turned to an AI chatbot for help.

On Alibaba’s chatbot Qwen, Guo entered her score, her rank in her home province of Shandong, her desired majors (law, accounting, or finance), her budget for tuition (moderate), and where she wants to live (coastal cities). The bot generated a report with dozens of choices.

“My family and I have no experience with college applications, so we had to rely on social media and AI,” Guo told Rest of World, adding that her parents had also asked ByteDance’s Doubao to suggest college programs for her. “There’s nothing in particular I want to study. We are just looking for good career prospects.”

Every year, around 10 million Chinese students take the college entrance exam known as the gaokao. Students wait for the results and then have just a few weeks to factor those scores into their application decisions. These grades determine whether a student can attend prestigious universities or pursue popular majors like business and engineering. Filling out these preferences is a high-stakes decision because, unlike in the U.S., Chinese universities have stringent requirements for transferring to a different field of study. Most students have only this one opportunity to decide on their future profession and survival in an increasingly competitive job market.

China’s Biggest AI Players

Many families pay private coaches to guide them through this decision, but AI companies are now offering the service for free to attract consumers to their chatbots. Since 2025, tech giants including Alibaba, ByteDance, Tencent, and Baidu have launched AI tools specializing in researching and recommending college programs.

These are typically agentic AI systems that analyze universities' historical admission cutoff scores. They ask for gaokao scores, career interests, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality assessments, tuition fees, and local climate. Eventually, the bots produce a list of suggested programs divided into “reach,” “safety,” and “backup” categories based on the student's admission probability.

Alibaba’s Qwen recruited 300 college search specialists to improve the system's reasoning, while Baidu promised human expert reviews for its recommendations. By July 8, Qwen had produced 23 million recommendation reports for gaokao takers. Tencent’s Yuanbao bot answered 200 million inquiries related to college admission by July 10, and Baidu reported 15 million users for its AI college advisory feature in late June.

While American families also use AI virtual consultants, Chinese high schools rarely provide career counseling. Before AI, families relied on guidance books, social media influencers, and independent tutors whose coaching sessions could cost thousands of dollars. Consultancy iiMedia estimated this advisory service industry at $160 million. Choosing the right major has become especially critical during a time of high youth unemployment and fears of AI automation. Paradoxically, AI itself has become a popular major choice as universities add programs like “embodied intelligence.”

“Don’t talk about dreams”

The best-known college admission adviser was Zhang Xuefeng, who had over 27 million followers on Douyin. He was known for bluntly telling working-class families which majors (like math and engineering) led to a bright future and which (like journalism and philosophy) did not. His company charged up to $2,700 for assistance.

After Zhang passed away in March, engineers built AI versions of him. One developer created a “Zhang Xuefeng skill” on GitHub, using his books and remarks to improve how AI agents perform tasks. Anyone can use this skill to make an AI agent speak in Zhang’s signature utilitarian manner. For example, the bot might tell an arts-interested student: “If your family has no money, don’t talk about dreams... Pick a major that puts food on the table, like computer science, education, or getting a government job.”

Xindy Lin, a designer in Fujian, built her own chatbot on OpenAI’s Codex to help her sister, combining the “Zhang Xuefeng skill” with current admission data and historical results. The AI suggested majors like supply-chain management and e-commerce marketing. Lin noted that individuals cannot digest the massive amount of information required in such a short time without help.

The Life Consequences of an AI Error

The college coaching industry has long been criticized for profiting from anxiety. Some human coaches, unfamiliar with the vast number of programs, now secretly use AI to generate recommendations. However, economist Ye Xiaoyang pointed out that rural students often lack the computer skills to effectively prompt a chatbot.

Ye launched a free AI coaching platform to help students explore career directions, noting that “a good AI system should be able to guide students to think for themselves.” He warned that AI tools could make mistakes, such as using outdated data or omitting strong options. Furthermore, if AI gives similar recommendations to students with similar scores, it could steer them toward the same programs, leading to match failures that force students into much lower-ranked schools.

Guo, the Shandong graduate, opted to cross-check her chatbot’s suggestions with official books and social networks like RedNote to investigate school dormitory conditions. “I still find real people’s experiences more trustworthy,” she said.