It’s really hard to vilify the Chinese now on this and make it stick! So far, they seem to be championing openness and freedom on this front, which considering the nature of the technology, is a huge deal!

If they change their stance later, we’ll criticize them the same.

It’s possible they don’t if they fundamentally believe the AI market is going to end up being an exercise in just mass manufacturing tokens, which China is going to easily win because they can generate way more electricity than any country and manufacture almost everything they need to do it domestically.

The models are just a distribution mechanism in that case, and it’s in their interest to get that into as many hands as possible.

If the Chinese government has anything to say about it, which in China they typically do, they won't be able to close everything down since the official stance is to be more open than closed.