This is good, of course, I just hope that sovereign cloud spending doesn’t include thd so-called “European Sovereign Cloud” by firms like AWS and the like as it was the case in the past.

Interesting, but I think we need to focus on our own backyards before poking others.

That’s a strange take if I may say so. Democracy is threatened in all the relatively low number of countries where it exists, but Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and some others are far away from dictatorial regimes like China and Russia.

Of course, we must focus also on transparency in our countries (this is what the study also explicitly says) but there we must also double down on transparency in authoritarian states. This is not limited to, but includes transparent supply chain laws, labour rights, human rights, free media, and other areas. It has nothing to do with ‘poking on others’ imo.

They force the government to levy taxes and tariffs and ban competition to protect their established non-competitive products and profit margins.

Even if we put aside that Chinese manufacturers produce often under slave-like conditions, the vast majority of companies are not fit for market without massive state subsidies and additional support that are much higher than anything in West.

A good way to observe this is, for example, when we compare Chinese and Western car manufacturers which are producing within China. Even in the country, Chinese car firms receive a lot more direct state aid by all comparative standards. Between 2019 and 2002, Tesla’s reported state aid was 2% of net income, and no grants since 2023 (European car markers’ grants were even lower than Tesla’s), while BYD’s subsidy income were 265 of net income in 2024 and 35% in 2025.

The gap between Western and Chinese producers is much larger if Western firms produce at home.

Another way Chinese carmakers lower costs: they ‘outsource’ costs to their suppliers. BYD has even created its own proprietary supply chain finance system called the “D-chain,” through which it issues “e-debt certificates" which means the company stands outside the law (there is a Negotiable Instruments Law in China in principle, but it doesn’t matter to all companies). According to company reports for the years 2023 and 2024, BYD took an average of 155 days to pay suppliers, Geely 149 days, and Leapmotor even 225 days.

Western carmakers paid their suppliers much sooner - Tesla withing 60 days, Volkswagen in 43 days, and 41 for Toyota in 41 days.

Chinese companies also benefit from below-market borowings (below the China Prime Loan Rate), and they receive preferential access to cheap land to build their factories (especially if and when there are good connections to the party).

And this is a TINY sample of what happens. Comparing Western and Chinese subsidies doesn’t make sense. It must clearly be said that under Western subsidy schemes, Chinese carmakers would have long been bankrupt.

The subsidies in China for its companies go well beyond everything we do (or have done ) in the West.

A good way to observe this is, for example, when we compare Chinese and Western car manufacturers which are producing within China. Even in the country, Chinese car firms receive a lot more direct state aid by all comparative standards. Between 2019 and 2002, Tesla’s reported state aid was 2% of net income, and no grants since 2023 (European car markers’ grants were even lower than Tesla’s), while BYD’s subsidy income were 265 of net income in 2024 and 35% in 2025.

The gap between Western and Chinese producers is much larger if Western firms produce at home.

Another way Chinese carmakers lower costs: they ‘outsource’ costs to their suppliers. BYD has even created its own proprietary supply chain finance system called the “D-chain,” through which it issues “e-debt certificates" which means the company stands outside the law (there is a Negotiable Instruments Law in China in principle, but it doesn’t matter to all companies). According to company reports for the years 2023 and 2024, BYD took an average of 155 days to pay suppliers, Geely 149 days, and Leapmotor even 225 days.

Western carmakers paid their suppliers much sooner - Tesla withing 60 days, Volkswagen in 43 days, and 41 for Toyota in 41 days.

Chinese companies also benefit from below-market borowings (below the China Prime Loan Rate), and they receive preferential access to cheap land to build their factories (especially if and when there are good connections to the party).

And this is a TINY sample of what happens. Comparing Western and Chinese subsidies doesn’t make sense. It must clearly be said that under Western subsidy schemes, Chinese carmakers would have long been bankrupt.

Edit: I didn’t mention that whenever you buy a China-made car (from a Chinese or non-Chinese brand), you risk to buy a car made by forced labour. We must not forget this.

This is an empty rant that makes no economic sense.

China’s goals are selfish … a good baseline for any other open source project which have public good in mind.

How does this make sense? There is no open source. As China is ‘selfish’, as you say yourself, how can this be a ‘good baseline for any other open source project which have public good in mind’?

What do you understand by ‘capitalism’ and what has it to do with this issue?

You are contradicting yourself over and again, the only consistent thing is the positive frame of China. This is just Chinese propaganda and makes no sense.

And capitalism defenders can’t have that…

What do you understand by ‘capitalism’ and what has it to do with this issue?

What China is attempting here is - amongst others - a shift towards a neoliberal system that will financially benefit a few at the expense of the mass (just look at the wealth and income inequality that has extensively increased in China in the recent decade and now reached U.S. levels, surpassing EU levels).

Open source should aim to make software a public good, not a commodity.

Maybe, but this is a very good article.

The model will inherently struggle with, or refuse to generate, content related to Taiwanese independence, the Tiananmen Square massacre, or critiques of the Chinese Communist Party -----

Evidence? The open version of Deepseek has no such restrictions. It’s questionable this is even technically possible.

Your statement “It’s questionable this is even technically possible” is complete bs. It is, of course, possible, and it is widely done. There is ample evidence for this.

In one study from September 2025, for example, Chinese chatbots (such as Deepseek and others) responded to prompts that were sensitive to the Chinese Communist Party with the CCP’s propaganda. You’ll find much more on the web, but from your comment’s tonality alone you clearly prefer the autocratic propaganda.

It’s almost hilarious how many accounts here on Lemmy are freaking out if you post justified critique of a dictatorship.

@TheMightyCat@ani.social

@BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.world

The risk is not in the visible code, but in the invisible training data, the alignment protocols, and the potential for future remote manipulation or data harvesting via associated cloud services.

Would that be good? I would clearly say ‘no’, the term ‘open source’ alone is offensively misinterpreted by the way the Chinese government is using it here. What China is doing here has nothing to do with open source. I hope Europe goes a different path with Mistral and other projects.

No, but your comment is whataboutism.

Usually the European tech that becomes popular is after they get bought by a US company

This is true, but only because they are bought at a very early stage. These are start-ups when being acquired.

Yes, but China’s AIs aren’t open source.

What’s the difference between U.S. and Chinese AI for those ‘with eyes willing to see’?

The sad answer is that Europe and others need to collaborate and develop their own tech. The U.S. and Chinese AI is the same useless crap, with China’s even more (intentionally) biased.

But this article is about China, not the U.S. If you engage further in whataboutism and conveying cheap Chinese propaganda narratives, I stop this conversation.

Censorship is an integral part of any Chinese LLMs, you never see the training data (which exposes the ‘open source’ label itself as propaganda). Deepseek & Co surrender to CCP messaging, there are plenty of reports on that.

And?

I am sure that doesn’t change the fact that China’s AI isn’t the solution. Xi Jinping hasn’t any interest in the well-being of the people. To so-called ‘leaders’ like Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, people are here to be governed and suppressed.

Why is everyone treating like American shit is any better than Chinese

I may be mistaken, but the article says both U.S. and Chinese are ‘shit’ if we want to put it that way. At least this is how I understand the content. “America’s quest for AI dominance is scary. China is not the solution.”

The conclusion is that Europe - supposedly with like-minded democratic allies like Canada, Australia, NZ, Taiwan, Japan, and others - should developed own homegrown tech. This development has already started, although maybe slow, but it’s going on.

What Europeans could not build quickly for themselves, due to a thicket of regulations, they often imported just as quickly from abroad….

Skype was a very successful European company that was acquired by Microsoft (and then shut down to promote MS Teams, a product that is much worse). Mojang Studios, famous for its online game Minecraft, is a Swedish product also acquired by Microsoft. DeepMind was acquired by Alphabet/Google from its UK founders.

The list of European companies that have eventually been acquired by U.S. big tech is very long. What Europe lacks in my humble opinion is a sense of sovereignty, meaning we need to make sure that our stakes are protected and not just sold out abroad. We needs more laws to protect this sovereignty (similar to those in the U.S. and China).

I also agree with other views here like @masterspace@lemmy.ca’s remark that American firms are underregulated, but this is something Europe can hardly influence. But Europe should enhance regulation to make sure that technology developed on the continent isn’t given away.

I strongly disagree with the article in that sense. There is a lot of homegrown EU tech, Mastodon being another example.

Such ‘corruption cases’ have been going on in China for decades, though with a little uptick in recent years. As many analyst and investigation show, however, the fate of these officials may have more likely to do with power struggle than corruption.

The purge “isn’t about corruption, it isn’t about leaking secrets, it is about a general that became too powerful”, [an analyst said in January this year after a high-ranked Chinese general was purged].

Observers say that there is indeed corruption, but it is also often a pretext “to make the party a more effective governing machine and a cudgel to remove political enemies,”

For Xi [Jinping], observers argue, corruption has become a catch-all term that encompasses not just graft, from small-time favours to huge bribes, but much more - ideological impurity, a lack of commitment to China’s ambitions and, crucially, disloyalty.

They say it triggers one of his big fears: an out-of-control party would prove disastrous for China, like it did for another major communist power, the erstwhile Soviet Union, whose fall he has often spoken about. The possibility of any such decline on his watch would threaten his power - and his legacy.

The recent purge of two military generals as cited in the linked article, has shown that,

“Official narratives after the purge of [the two Chinese military generals] Zhang and Liu make clear that their dismissals were political in nature and based on a [perceived or real] lack of loyalty to Xi and his goals” …

Xi’s circle of trusted followers is narrowing ever more to exclude the very people he relied on to consolidate his power, … but he expects this to “continue to play out until there are hardly any leaders left that aren’t complete Xi products”.

This account has already been banned in another instance 9 months ago …