Chinese LLM API Evaluation Checklist for Western Developers
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Chinese LLMLLM EvaluationDeepSeekQwenMiniMax
Chinese LLM APIs should be evaluated with real product tasks, not only benchmark scores. Use this checklist before sending production traffic.
Quality
Test correctness, tone, formatting, reasoning, hallucination risk, and refusal behavior.
Compatibility
Verify OpenAI-compatible SDK usage, streaming, structured output, tool calling, and error formats.
Cost
Measure input tokens, output tokens, retries, long context, and cost per successful task.
Latency
Test from your production region and measure time to first token.
Compliance
Document vendors, data flows, retention, and customer controls.
Final thoughts
The best Chinese LLM API depends on workload. Evaluate DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, MiniMax, GLM, and Doubao with the same test set and route accordingly.