If there was some grand strategy for all Chinese labs, surely it'd have leaked by now. I think its more likely that:
- Companies can still make money from commodities
- Chinese labs only have 5-10% the valuation of OpenAI/Anthropic, so massive monopoly profits aren't necessary. Profit expectations for tech companies in China are really low in general, complete opposite of the US.
- Open weighting is a great way to get talent/attention/reputation