China’s AI ecosystem is not as open as it claims. Nor is any other country’s | Letters

Ambassador Zheng Zeguang rightly celebrates openly released AI models, and the Chinese labs behind Qwen, DeepSeek and Kimi have led the way – competition that benefits everyone, especially where models can run on modest hardware in the developing world (The future of AI hinges on openness and cooperation. China and Britain can gain much by working together, 30 July). But his claim that openness is a defining feature of China’s AI development deserves scrutiny. Take GeoGPT, the geoscience system from Zhejiang Lab showcased at last month’s World AI Conference as…