Partly, the Chinese are distilling closed source models, and OpenAI and Anthropic's attempts to stop this have only succeeded in making their outputs less transparent. Partly, the actual frontier of AI is currently mostly vibes and marketing, as everyone's cheated the tests so badly that the only way to stay in the running is to cheat. Partly, that weve passed the point where even an honest evaluator could say which general purpose model is better than another, since their performance fluxuates wildly from task to task.

Very cheap electricity + a stronger education system + having access to the work of other open-source groups

Chinese schools do have reputation for being extremely difficult and China invests more in actual education.

Combine that with most US funding being a giant Ourobouros of AI companies funding eachother...