Apple Intelligence Is Finally Coming to iPhones in China in December, With Alibaba's Qwen Built Into Siri

CUPERTINO, Calif. - Apple Intelligence is coming to iPhones in mainland China. Apple said on Friday, in a press release on its China newsroom, that its first batch of Apple Intelligence features will open for testing on Nov. 4 with the latest iOS developer beta and reach Chinese users when iOS 27.3 is released in December.

The launch includes a partnership with Alibaba. Apple said Chinese users will be able to call on Alibaba’s Qwen directly inside Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence, including for text and image understanding. Users can ask questions about photos and about documents such as PDFs and presentations, and Writing Tools can ask Qwen to compose original text from scratch. Access requires signing in with a Qwen account or with Sign in with Apple.

Screenshot: @markgurman on X

The rest of the feature list will look familiar to iPhone owners elsewhere. Apple listed Live Translation in Messages, FaceTime and the Phone app, plus in-person translation through AirPods 4 with active noise cancellation and AirPods Pro 2 and later. Writing Tools can rewrite, proofread and summarize text. Visual Intelligence identifies objects and places through the camera, and Clean Up removes distractions from photos. Genmoji turns a typed description into a custom emoji.

Image: Apple

Mail gets a Priority Messages section and email summaries, Messages and Mail get Smart Reply suggestions, and notifications get summaries, Priority Notifications and a Reduce Interruptions focus. Audio recordings in Notes and the Phone app can be transcribed and summarized. Apple said the features run on generative models it built itself, with Qwen added for certain requests.

Image: Apple

Siri gets an upgrade, but not the big one. Users in China get Type to Siri and a Siri that Apple says understands people even when they stumble over their words and keeps track of context across a conversation. The update does not include Siri AI or the other next-generation Apple Intelligence features Apple announced at WWDC 2026, and MacRumors reported that Image Playground is also missing. Elsewhere, Siri AI just picked up five more languages in iOS 27.2.

Image: Apple

The rollout is iPhone only for now. Apple said support for other platforms will follow after it receives the necessary approvals. According to 9to5Mac, the features will work on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, the iPhone 16 lineup and later, iPhone Air and iPhone Duo, with both Siri and the device language set to English or Simplified Chinese.

Image: Apple

The announcement ends a long wait. Apple Intelligence first arrived in other markets in 2024, while the China version needed regulatory sign-off. Reuters reported in July that Apple had cleared a major regulatory hurdle, and Bloomberg reported this month that the launch would come in December with iOS 27.3. Apple also took the unusual step of saying when the next developer beta would bring the features, a date it usually keeps to itself.