The Strategic Proliferation of Chinese Open-Weight AI Models (warontherocks.com)

• Chinese AI workload share grew from 1% to 30% in one year.
• Qwen models have surpassed 700 million downloads.
• Strategic security threat from widespread adoption of non-transparent foreign models.

"Chinese AI models have rapidly expanded, capturing 30% of global workloads by late 2025. Platforms like Alibaba’s Qwen have reached massive scale, integrating into global R&D and Western startup ecosystems. This growth creates significant supply chain vulnerabilities, as the open-weight nature of these models masks opaque control mechanisms. Policymakers must address these security risks to prevent strategic dependency and the leakage of intellectual property through AI-powered integration into critical infrastructure."