As the Beijing Olympics draw near, the western media are obsessed with anything Chinese. Right on cue, here comes a young Chinese contender for global stardom, a woman who ticks so many boxes that her record label surely cannot believe their luck.

Sa Dingding is 24. She writes her own songs and produces her own records, on which she mixes electronica with traditional folk influences and instruments from across China and beyond, while singing in a variety of languages, from Sanskrit to Mandarin, from Tibetan to one she invented herself. Her following in China, Dingding says, includes "many old people and many young people. It's the combination of ancient Chinese culture and the modern electronic thing: the youth listen to the music and the older people like the culture behind the music." The fact she is remarkably good-looking and dresses in exotic, self-designed clothes has no doubt helped.

Now Dingding is coming to Britain, hoping to win over yet another audience. She has been nominated for a BBC Radio 3 award for world music, and the fact that she has decided to fly from Beijing to the mysteriously low-key awards ceremony clearly suggests she is in with a very big chance. Dingding has already received deserved praise for her electronic-folk fusion album, Alive, and will be appearing in the summer at the Womad festival.

So how does she feel about being promoted as a world music star? Her response is surprisingly corporate: "My music is marketed as Sa Dingding music, not some special musical style. To me, the music is only Sa Dingding."

Her father is Chinese and her mother Mongolian; for the first six years of her life, Dingding spent the summer travelling across Mongolia as a nomad with her grandmother. "We were living in the grasslands," she recalls. "I heard people singing every day, and it told me that music means freedom."

Later, she moved to eastern and then central China with her parents, before settling in Beijing, where she attended university "after deciding at the age of 10 that I wanted to be a musician". Dingding became fascinated with electronic music, and by 18 was hailed as the best dance singer in China. "But at that time I was singing songs by other people, not expressing my own feelings," she says. So she started using electronica to "help me explore my imagination and my thoughts about music", while also studying folk instruments, learning to play the ancient Chinese zheng (zither) and making use of the Mongolian horse-hair fiddle.

If her music is unexpected, then so, too, is the way Dingding makes use of different languages and influences in her songs. Lagu Lagu was inspired by a visit to the remote Lagu people of southern China, whose language is fast approaching extinction. "They are farmers living in a deep valley, and there's only one village for the whole Lagu race. There are many people like that who don't get noticed, and I hope that through my music I can introduce these people to the world," she says. Dingding doesn't speak Lagu, so she made up her own language for the song; she used the same technique on an emotional song in memory of her Mongolian grandmother. "I searched deep in my memory for the language my grandmother used to talk to me while I was still a baby. The people in the studio were in tears. I think people know how to sing before they know how to speak a language. I believe that everyone experiences this self-created language."

There are more surprises in her use of Sanskrit and Buddhist texts. "Buddhism is an important part of the inspiration for me to create the music," she says. "It can enlighten my soul and help me find a good way to express my deep spirit." So would she describe herself as a Buddhist? "No, that's not right. But Buddhism is part of the oriental culture and it's part of my life and part of my blood. In my free time, I also read the Bible and other texts ... I care about every kind of spiritual wisdom."

Which led, inevitably, to the subject of Tibet. One song on the album, Holy Incense, is credited as the "Tibet version", but Dingding says she had not even been there when it was recorded. "But after I finished the album I went to Tibet four times, and they thought I was Tibetan." She makes no mention of the recent Tibet protests, so I ask instead about Björk, who upset the Chinese authorities earlier this month when she sang Declare Independence and shouted "Tibet, Tibet" at a concert in Beijing. "I didn't know," she says, "because I didn't go to the concert." When I repeat the question, she adds: "Thanks for the information. I must check out the details and see what happened."

She seems happier talking about her life in Beijing, where she has won so many awards this year that "it's harvest season for me". In fact, the young writer Cai Jun has made her the heroine of his latest serialised thriller, "which has sold 800,000 copies already", and is apparently cult reading among college students. And there's still the Olympics to come. Dingding and her record company are planning a major event in Beijing just before the games start, "and my idea is to introduce artists from abroad". Who would she invite? "Well, my personal thinking is Andrea Bocelli and Robbie Williams." Robbie Williams? She laughed. "Yes, I like him."

· Alive is out now on Wrasse.