China's AI edge: free open-weight models that lock in global dependency

中国人工智能的制胜之道

Jason Hsu of Hudson Institute argues China's years of free open-weight releases have locked global developers onto Chinese models. Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 and Alibaba's Qwen are already used by Airbnb, Cursor, and DoorDash for customer service and code review; Qwen has spawned over 100,000 derivative models. With China now discussing restricting overseas access, any cutoff would strand foreign users on outdated versions. Hsu urges the U.S. to fund a permanently open-weight model, bundled with chips, infrastructure, and financing, rather than retaliating with bans.

Why it matters: NYT op-ed by a Hudson Institute fellow, giving institutional weight. Provides concrete adoption data for Chinese open-weight models overseas, not just rhetoric. Downside: it's commentary, not breaking news, and the hinted-at 'restriction' debate isn't fully fleshed out in the ...