China's AI push is about spreading economic gains, not enriching tech giants, a finance CEO says

• China is using open-source AI to spread economic gains beyond tech giants, a finance CEO said.
• This approach contrasts with closed US AI models, prioritizing affordability and scale, he said.
• Experts say AI is being treated as economic infrastructure in China.

Open source — that might be the clearest signal of how China wants artificial intelligence to reshape its economy.

Hisham Alrayes, the group CEO of Bahrain-based GFH Financial Group, said China is prioritizing open models and broad deployment to spread AI's gains across the economy, instead of funneling them to a few tech giants.

Speaking at a Davos panel on China's "AI+ Economy" strategy on Wednesday, Alrayes said the country's approach reflects a fundamentally different economic philosophy.

"You look at the open structure of the China AI philosophy — then you have the non-open structure," Alrayes said. "That signals that the benefit they want to see is to trickle down into the economy, into the companies."

Open source as economic strategy

China's most prominent AI breakout, DeepSeek, reflects that philosophy.

It mostly uses open-source models that have drawn global attention, in contrast to many large US language models that remain closed and proprietary, reaping the benefits of tightly controlled commercial ecosystems.

Meta's former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, has said that a key reason behind DeepSeek's success is its open-source model, which, he said, can outperform proprietary models in terms of efficiency and innovation by building on shared research.

Meanwhile, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said that China's open-source AI models could gain an edge globally because they're free, making them more attractive than costly proprietary US systems for governments and countries that can't afford closed models.

Similarly, Alrayes said, China — in pursuing the open model — is aiming for affordability and scale.

"It's not the benefit of that company, of that product, the return of that individual. It's not an individual — it's an economy," Alrayes said.

That philosophy is reflected in China's national "AI Plus" action plan, which prioritizes diffusion, said fellow panelist Gong Ke, executive director of the Chinese Institute for New Generation AI Development Strategies at Nankai University.

The policy, he said, focuses on embedding AI across manufacturing, healthcare, finance, education, and other sectors, rather than on breakthroughs such as artificial general intelligence.

He added that the plan sets explicit adoption targets, with AI agents and intelligent terminals expected to reach 70% penetration by 2027 and 90% by 2030.

AI as infrastructure, not a profit engine

Alrayes said China's open-source tilt ultimately reflects a broader goal: making AI an economic utility rather than a profit center for a small group of companies.

"China is looking to create value throughout the economy, very clear, with very specific objectives across the economy," he said. "Not just as a benefit to those companies. This is the difference in the philosophy."