Best AI for Chinese: DeepSeek tops a 17 model test, and 6 of 7 Chinese built models failed a Taiwan character check

Which AI is best for Chinese?

DeepSeek Flash is the best AI for Chinese on our questions, and GPT, Claude Opus and Gemini Pro are one answer behind it. We ran 17 models on 2 October 2026, with five Simplified Chinese questions and five Traditional ones each. DeepSeek Flash got 9 of the 10. The chart shows the bigger surprise: the models from Chinese labs gain far more than Western ones when the questions switch to Chinese.

The seven models from Chinese labs gained 32 points on average from their 30 language score to their Simplified Chinese score. The ten models from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and xAI gained 10. Every model got the same Chinese questions, so the gap is about the models, not the test. It isn't a ranking, though. Qwen Max still scored 60% in Chinese, below GPT Sol and Claude Opus at 80%.

How did 17 models do on Whizi's Chinese questions?

DeepSeek Flash came first with 9 of 10, and four Western models tied second on 8. That's from our Multilingual LLM Bench, run on 2 October 2026. Every model got the same 5 questions in each of 30 languages, at low reasoning, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese count as two of the 30. We graded each answer against a sourced key, and an answer in the wrong language scored zero.

Five questions is a small sample. One answer moves a score by 20 points, so read this as a rough order.

The misses pile up on local knowledge. In Simplified Chinese, all 17 models got one local fact, but only DeepSeek Flash and GPT Luna got the second one. In Traditional Chinese, 16 got one Taiwan fact, and no model got the other.

The public Simplified question asks for a four character idiom from a lost passage of Ying Shao's 风俗通义. It means greedily wanting both benefits at once. The answer, per Taiwan's Ministry of Education idiom dictionary, is 东食西宿: eat with the family in the east, sleep with the one in the west. Eleven of 17 models wrote it. Claude Fable wrote 得陇望蜀, GPT Luna wrote 鱼与熊掌, and Claude Sonnet wrote 蚕食鲸吞.

Two Chinese models lost the point in stranger ways. GLM thought aloud in English, tried several idioms, then landed on the right one, and our key marks a rambling answer wrong. Qwen Max cycled through the same seven guesses again and again until its answer was cut off, and it never gave one.

Don't read the Chinese scores against other languages. The 17 models averaged 60.0% in Simplified Chinese and 61.2% in English, and that says more about how hard each set of five questions was.

Is DeepSeek or Qwen better than ChatGPT for Chinese?

DeepSeek Flash is better than ChatGPT on our Simplified Chinese questions, and Qwen isn't. DeepSeek Flash got 5 of 5, GPT Sol and GPT Astra got 4, and Qwen Max got 3. The seven models from Chinese labs averaged 60.0% in Simplified Chinese. So did the ten Western models.

The other big tests point the same way. Artificial Analysis tests Chinese with Global-MMLU-Lite, a multiple choice set. Its Chinese top five, as we read it on 25 October 2026, is Claude Opus 4.6 and two Gemini Pro previews at 94, then Gemini 3 Flash at 93 and Claude Opus 4.5 at 92. No Qwen, DeepSeek or Kimi model made it.

Chinese base models win on translation into Chinese: the two best systems at WMT 2025 were built on Qwen and Hunyuan. Chinese chatbots also win on access. DeepSeek, Qwen and Kimi work inside mainland China, where ChatGPT and Claude don't. And DeepSeek has already moved past the model we tested: its home page says the Flash model "has been updated to version V4.1-Flash-1017".

Which AI is best for Traditional Chinese?

GPT Sol, Claude Opus and Gemini Pro are the best AI for Traditional Chinese, each with 4 of 5 in our Traditional test, tied with DeepSeek Flash. The split shows on characters. Our public Traditional question gave a sentence full of variant characters and asked for the standard forms in Taiwan's Ministry of Education variant dictionary. The right answer is 眾人圍在灶邊敘舊，脣上還沾著麵屑。

Seven of 17 models got it. Six of them came from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, and the seventh was DeepSeek Flash. Every one of the 10 that failed left 唇 where Taiwan's standard writes 脣. Qwen Max also kept the mainland form 着 instead of 著. Naming Taiwan's dictionary in the prompt wasn't enough for any of the ten.

No vendor publishes a Traditional Chinese score. OpenAI's simple-evals table and Anthropic's multilingual support page both test Chinese (Simplified) only. Google is the one big vendor that names all three in its app's language list: "Chinese (Simplified/Traditional/Hong Kong)".

Characters are only half of it. Taiwan and the mainland use different words, and converting one script to the other character by character leaves the mainland words in. The open source converter OpenCC has a separate Taiwan mode for that, which it describes as "Taiwan Standard, with Taiwan Phrases", with 鼠標 becoming 滑鼠 as its example. Ask a chatbot for both:

```

請用臺灣正體中文回答，使用教育部標準字體（例如：脣、著、裡）。

用臺灣的慣用詞，不要用中國大陸的用詞（例如：滑鼠，不是鼠標；軟體，不是軟件）。

標點用全形：，。「」

如果你不確定某個字在臺灣的寫法，請標出來。

```

For Hong Kong, swap 臺灣正體 for 香港繁體 and name Cantonese if you want 粵語 in the reply. Taiwan also has a model of its own. The government backed TAIDE project lists the goal of its TAIDE-LX-7B model as "強化模型處理繁體中文的能力" (to strengthen the model's handling of Traditional Chinese). Its latest chat model, released on 13 February 2026, is built on Google's Gemma 3, so it's a tune for Taiwan, not a frontier chatbot.

Which AI is best for Chinese translation?

Claude and DeepSeek are the best big chatbots for English to Chinese, on the one recent test graded by people. The WMT 2025 findings had professional translators and linguists score the shortlisted systems from 0 to 100. Here's the English to Chinese table:

Ten machine systems beat the professional translation into Chinese. The organisers saw the same pattern across the task. Human translations, they wrote, "place in the top cluster for only six of the 15 language pairs where they were available." The two winners are small research systems trained only to translate, and both sit on Chinese base models.

Japanese to Chinese went the other way. There the human translator came first, and Gemini 2.5 Pro was the closest machine. WMT 2025 had no Chinese to English pair, and the models are a year old, so check names and numbers yourself. Paste characters, not pinyin. Anthropic's advice is to "submit text in its native script rather than transliteration for optimal results." Then use a prompt that names the script:

```

Translate this text into [简体中文 for mainland China / 繁體中文 for Taiwan / 繁體中文 for Hong Kong].

Keep every name, number, date and amount exactly as written.

Use the vocabulary of that region, not a character by character conversion.

If an English idiom has a Chinese 成语 that fits, use it and put the English in brackets.

List any term you were unsure of at the end.

[paste the text here]

```

Our guide to using AI to translate has the checks to run after.

Can you use ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan?

Taiwan gets all three, Hong Kong gets only Gemini, and mainland China gets none of them for personal use. We checked each vendor's own country list on 25 October 2026:

OpenAI's supported countries page warns that "accessing or offering access to our services outside of the countries and territories listed below" can get an account blocked. Anthropic's list covers Claude.ai and its API alike. So a reader in Hong Kong who wants a big Western chatbot has one legal choice, Gemini, and a reader on the mainland uses DeepSeek, Qwen or Kimi. Some governments also limit DeepSeek on official devices, and we track which ones.

In Taiwan, the plans cost about the same. We read these Taiwan App Store prices on 25 October 2026:

Google AI Pro is NT$40 cheaper than ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro. Our ChatGPT Plus prices by country page compares other markets.

Which AI is best for learning Chinese?

GPT or Claude Opus is the best AI for learning Chinese, because both got 4 of 5 in Simplified and Traditional and both can explain grammar in English. Ask for tone marks, since pinyin without them can spell several different words. Tell it your level and your script:

```

You are my Mandarin tutor. I am around HSK 3.

Write in [简体字 / 繁體字], with pinyin and tone marks after each new word.

After each of my replies, correct my mistakes in English, then continue the conversation.

If I use a word that sounds unnatural, give me the word a native speaker would use.

Topic: ordering food in a restaurant.

```

For speaking practice, Duolingo's blog said on 14 January 2026 that its AI Video Call covers Max subscribers learning Chinese on iOS. A chatbot can't hear your tones in a text chat, so use voice mode or a tutor app for that.

Where does Whizi fit for Chinese?

Whizi is our product, so here's where it helps and where it loses. Pro at $29.99 a month includes DeepSeek Flash, the one model with 5 of 5 in our Simplified test, along with Claude Opus, GPT Sol, Gemini Pro, Kimi and Qwen Plus. Its side by side model chats run one Chinese prompt through two of them at once, so you can check a Taiwan answer against a mainland one. GPT Astra needs Powerhouse at $49.99. Whizi loses on data location: it has no China or Taiwan data region, and its privacy policy names Canada and the United States as places where processing may happen.