Early on February 6th, Alibaba’s AI application Qianwen APP officially launched the “Spring Festival 3 Billion Free Orders” event, starting with free milk tea. The first wave used free milk tea as an entry point, inviting users nationwide to use AI to order milk tea for free with one sentence. After updating the Qianwen APP, all users can receive a 25 yuan no-threshold free order card, which not only allows free milk tea but also enables purchasing New Year goods and ordering takeout via Taobao flash sale. Observers’ tests found that simply clicking on “1 cent to drink milk tea” at the lower left corner of the Qianwen APP would pop up multiple milk tea options near the user’s location, covering mainstream tea and coffee brands such as Mixue Bingcheng, Nayuki, Luckin Coffee, Bawang Chaji, Hushang Ayi, Chabaidao, and Kudi Coffee. Selecting their preferred one and clicking “Use Qianwen Free Card” would redirect to the Alipay payment page.
By around 3 p.m. on the 6th, according to the latest data, less than 3 hours after the event went live, the Qianwen APP had issued over 1 million milk tea orders. Alibaba Group indeed “spent heavily” to compete with industry rivals. Too many people downloaded the Qianwen app to order milk tea, causing a surge of users that overwhelmed the platform, leading to system crashes and multiple prompts saying “The event is too popular, please try again later.” Online platforms couldn’t withstand the impact of this event, and it’s hard to imagine how much the labor intensity of milk tea shop workers has increased. Alibaba Group’s capitalists are sparing no effort to advertise their AI products, while also causing trouble for milk tea workers and delivery drivers. Who is really footing the bill for this so-called “discount event”?
Reports indicate that the second wave of the Spring Festival 3 Billion Free Orders will start on February 13th. During the Spring Festival, everyone will probably be even busier.
Did everyone have a big order today? Considering that many workers in the service industry and milk tea shop employees are on our forum, I saw this news today and wanted to ask how everyone feels today. Welcome to leave a comment.
The reason why Alibaba’s capitalists are so aggressively promoting their own promotional activities is mainly because Qianwen, as an AI product, is operating in the fiercely competitive global AI To C market: overseas, ChatGPT firmly occupies users’ minds; domestically, the competition is intense, with Doubao surpassing DeepSeek to become the monthly active TOP1, and products like Tencent Yuanbao and Kimi, whether from large companies or startups, have already accumulated a relatively stable user base. Alibaba’s entry at this time inevitably appears somewhat late. Therefore, in order to capture the market, when the Qianwen app was launched, capitalists had to employ such strategies to attract users.
Unbelievable, live demonstration of ordering 40 cups of milk tea, wasting an hour of manpower
'Wu Jia demonstrated live using the Qianwen App to order “the first cup of Naichawang Tea Ji’s Boya Juexian.” He issued a voice command to the Qianwen App: “Help me order 40 cups of Bawang Tea Ji’s Boya Juexian,” and the app quickly placed an order on Taobao Flash Sale, completing AI payment within the app without any redirects. Soon after, a Taobao Flash Sale courier delivered the milk tea to the scene.
‘After multiple attempts, some users successfully ordered a one-cent milk tea. Many netizens also shared their experiences of successfully placing orders during this event on social media. Due to the high volume of simultaneous orders, many milk tea shops across the country experienced a surge in orders, with some stores even lining up over 1,400 cups.’
On February 7th, Qianwen will have a new user recruitment activity. Old accounts can invite new accounts to get another free card , with a maximum of 20 cards. I heard that Dato also did this set during the Spring Festival Gala
This is probably Alibaba’s way of promoting AI; the asset-owning class of milk tea shops wouldn’t give away milk tea for free. It’s definitely a form of利益输送 (interest transfer) between Alibaba, this monopolistic group, and the asset-owning class of these milk tea shops. They certainly won’t lose money.
Today, influenced by this activity, most Hong Kong stock tea beverage stocks rose, with Guming rising over 5%, reaching a new high since listing, Chabaidao rose over 4%, and Shanghainese Auntie and Mixue Group also followed with slight increases.
(上市的奶茶公司股价疯狂上涨，股票价格是和股息，也就是利润率成正比，说明这些奶茶企业都赚爆了)
The final result is that China’s milk tea shop workers will have to work harder, be subjected to even more brutal exploitation than before, but their wages will not increase at all. Who will pay the bill? Undoubtedly, China’s working class will pay the bill.
Moreover, the cost of milk tea is very low. For example, Grandpa doesn’t brew tea; the shelf life of “milk” is nine months, and “fruits” are mostly jam. A cup of milk tea, considering only the materials, might cost less than a yuan, but the normal selling price can be over twenty yuan. The upper class of the petty bourgeoisie is both stupid and wicked. They are crazily greedy for personal enjoyment. Previously, an employee of Bawang Tea Princess filmed a video of “Indian milk tea,” which angered and provoked their protests, as they believed they should drink milk tea that is safe and clean. Later, this employee was fired.
Those parasites drink only the blood and sweat of workers. Originally, these industrial wastes were not worth much, and they were made into various beverages by workers. This kind of massive order boom makes capitalists huge profits, while workers’ wages remain largely unchanged, with their labor intensity directly increased by several times, and a large amount of surplus raw materials given to capitalists for consumption.
I was wondering why there was a sudden surge in orders yesterday morning, and there were also a bunch of 0.01 yuan orders. Yesterday (2.6), the order surge started around 10:30 AM and continued until 3 PM before finally finishing. Most of the staff in the store only managed to eat around 4 PM, and even the early shift workers didn’t have time to eat before they had to leave. The employees generally commented that this was like being “treated like Japanese soldiers,” with their lives being sacrificed here. The labor intensity was basically doubled compared to normal. But even with such an increase in labor intensity, the employees’ wages didn’t change at all, remaining the same as usual. This kind of so-called promotion that claims to benefit customers is essentially a tactic used by capitalists to intensify the exploitation of service workers, extracting surplus value from them. After all, the labor intensity of service workers largely depends on the number of customers. The bourgeoisie finds it difficult to directly increase labor intensity through upper management commands, so the best way to raise exploitation and intensify labor is to increase the number of customer orders. This also makes it easier for them to accelerate capital turnover (clearing inventory in bubble tea shops) and to crush competitors (using大量廉价产品挤压小品牌). For capitalists, this can be considered a win-win situation with no drawbacks.
Alibaba’s so-called “free order activity” torments service workers all across China. The money used for this free order campaign originally comes from the surplus value extracted from delivery riders under Taobao Flash Sale. Now, it is being used again to expand market share through such buyout activities. Recently, some delivery riders have also reported frequent accidents under Taobao Flash Sale, causing many orders to be transferred to Meituan, mainly because of too short delivery times and too many orders. It is hard to imagine how much further the workload and intensity for delivery workers and service industry laborers will increase if this trend continues.
It seems someone tested the damn Taobao Flash Sale and secretly reduced the delivery time by 20%. The 1 minute on Taobao Flash Sale is 20 seconds faster than real time, causing couriers to ride even faster, or they would go超时
, with a maximum of 20 cards. I heard that Dato also did this set during the Spring Festival Gala 
