Local models are the ones that have appealed to me the most, but even with 128GB of RAM I can't run the models I wanted to run like the latest qwen model, which was a disappointment for me. A crossword puzzle generator has been my metric for testing them and I've never seen one able to create it from scratch. They've gotten much better in the past couple years, but are still incapable of what I consider a pretty basic challenge.
I'll probably get the itch in a month or two and try the latest local models requiring no more than 128GB RAM and 24GB GPU produced by China.
My coworkers all use anthropic and openai based models so they will absolutely get trashed when the capital subsidies stop. Definitely you're right that the Chinese models aren't bound by the same financial scam.