Information Seeking in China: A Different Ecosystem, Familiar Behavior

Summary: Information seeking in China is driven by mobile social-media apps. But how users prompt and engage with genAI mirrors what we've seen in the West.

Our recent research on information-seeking behavior found that generative AI (genAI) is meaningfully reshaping how people search — cutting through the friction of keyword foraging , accelerating habit change, and exposing a wide spectrum of AI literacy among everyday users. But those studies focused mainly on English-speaking participants from North America. A natural question follows: do these patterns hold elsewhere?

To find out, we conducted a remote study with 6 participants in China. Our sample included a mix of ages, occupations, locations, and levels of familiarity with AI. We found that the patterns we documented in the West — how people prompt, which genAI outputs they trust, and how AI literacy shapes their experience — also showed up consistently in China. But the way those patterns play out looks quite different, shaped by a mobile-first culture and a much stronger reliance on social platforms over search.

How Information Seeking Differs in China vs. North America

China's information-seeking ecosystem looks quite different from the West. Many search engines and genAI apps used in the West are not available in China.