State‑managed open AI strategy

China is pursuing a deliberate hybrid: encouraging open‑weight model publication and ecosystem experimentation while keeping those activities under explicit party oversight and industrial subsidies. That creates a governance model distinct from both Western open‑source libertarianism and tight central locking, with predictable implications for competition, diffusion and political control. — If other states emulate a state‑managed openness model, it reshapes global AI competition, export controls, and the political economy of model diffusion.