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Minxiao Chang

When generative artificial intelligence first swept through China’s technology sector, workers faced a clear directive from management: use AI and use it often.
Consuming vast numbers of AI tokens – the basic unit of computing power needed to process text or write code – became a badge of honour, with companies often viewing a high token count as a sign that employees were productive and taking initiative.
But those computing allowances are now being sharply rolled back as China’s leading internet companies introduce token quotas to rein in rising AI-related costs, according to staff who spoke with the South China Morning Post on condition of anonymity.
At ByteDance, one employee said staff using closed-source models must co-pay out of pocket. The company reimburses roughly half of external tool costs, capping annual payouts at around US$1,000 for technical staff and interns, and US$300 for non-technical employees, according to the staff member.
Alibaba Group Holding, meanwhile, allocates employees 3,000 to 6,000 monthly credits for its internal coding platform, QoderWork, with additional credits granted when needed, according to people familiar with the programme. Reimbursements for external AI tools are capped at US$200 a month and subject to security rules.
At Baidu, developers start with a baseline allowance of 1,500 yuan (US$223) a month, with another 1,500 yuan top-up available upon request, according to employees.
While routine development tasks typically only consumed about 500 yuan worth of tokens per month, staff using advanced models in “deep-thinking” modes could exhaust their monthly allowance much more quickly, they said.


At Tencent Holdings, workers who previously had access to flat annual token allocations must now draw from departmental pools overseen by line managers, according to several employees.
Those who ran out mid-month had to file requests with their supervisors for additional resources, the sources said. Tencent has reassured employees that it would not rank them by token consumption nor measure their performance solely by token usage.
In response to queries, Tencent said on Saturday that it aimed to meet employee AI token needs as far as possible, adjusting allocations based on workload, demand and model capabilities. The company added that “tokenmaxxing” – excessive consumption merely to inflate usage numbers – should not be encouraged.
Alibaba, Baidu and ByteDance did not respond to requests for comment. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
The tightening rules reflect an operational headache brewing inside tech firms. As workers adopt increasingly complex agentic AI workflows – where software autonomously plans, executes code, searches for information and verifies its own work – a single prompt can rapidly burn through computational capacity.
Data from Goldman Sachs highlights the scale of the demand. Enterprise and consumer token consumption was projected to jump 24-fold between 2026 and 2030, reaching 120 quadrillion tokens monthly, the bank said in a May report.
While the cost to process each token was forecast to fall by 60 to 70 per cent annually, lower prices could encourage companies to run models more frequently, analysts said.
Additional reporting by Ann Cao, Ben Jiang and Coco Feng


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Employees at Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance all report tightening token policies, with some staff asked to co-pay to use US AI models


Employees at Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance all report tightening token policies, with some staff asked to co-pay to use US AI models.


Forget AI KPIs: how China’s tech giants are rationing tokens for employees

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Employees at Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance all report tightening token policies, with some staff asked to co-pay to use US AI models

Employees at Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance all report tightening token policies, with some staff asked to co-pay to use US AI models