Can ‘token exports’ give China an edge in the AI era?

As AI tokens emerge as a new commodity, China’s cost advantage is reshaping global model competition, though monetisation gaps remain

As Chinese artificial intelligence companies continue to push for the adoption of their flagship models overseas, they have taken on a new role as a key source of so-called “token exports” to the global market.

Chinese AI models accounted for four of the top 10 models in terms of token consumption on popular AI model marketplace OpenRouter from March 18 to April 18, highlighting their growing visibility in global developer usage of AI systems.

Domestic token demand has been surging at an exponential pace. Data from China’s National Data Administration showed that daily token consumption had exceeded 140 trillion by March 2026, a more than 1,000-fold increase from 100 billion in early 2024. The figure also rose over 40 per cent in the first three months of this year compared with levels at the end of 2025.

The South China Morning Post examines the evolving compute ecosystem and how China’s token-driven AI services are expanding internationally, albeit with structural limitations.

OpenRouter, a US-based model aggregation platform, integrates more than 300 leading AI models and processes over 30 trillion tokens per month. It accounts for roughly 1 per cent of all trackable global token consumption, according to research by Frank Nagle of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy.