China’s Open-Source AI Strategy Poses Global Security Concerns

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China's Open-Source AI Strategy Poses Global Security Concerns

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China’s embrace of open-source artificial intelligence (AI) is a cornerstone of its national strategy to become a global leader in the field by 2030. This approach involves promoting open-source sharing between industry and academia, and leading in areas like natural language processing for the Chinese language. Chinese AI labs often publish model source code and weights, and offer their high-end products at a significantly lower cost than global competitors, sometimes one-sixth to one-fourth the price of US rivals. This strategy has fueled rapid international adoption, with Chinese large language models (LLMs) showing a 460% increase in site visits within two months in 2025. Alibaba’s Qwen models, for instance, have become a major force in the open-source AI ecosystem, with over 100,000 derivatives.

However, this widespread adoption of Chinese open-source AI models raises significant security concerns for other nations. Experts worry about the potential for supply chain poisoning, intelligence collection, and the “capability uplift” for malicious actors. Chinese-origin AI models are developed by companies subject to China’s National Intelligence Law, which mandates cooperation with national security investigations and intelligence gathering. This means that sensitive information processed through these models, such as proprietary code or business strategies, could potentially be accessible to Chinese security services.

Furthermore, open-source AI models, in general, are vulnerable to being repurposed for malicious activities like espionage, cyberwarfare, disinformation, and even weapons development. There are documented instances of extremist and terrorist groups using publicly available AI tools to enhance their operations. The rapid progress of Chinese models, such as Zhipu AI’s GLM-5.2, which has been noted to perform comparably to leading American models at a fraction of the cost, intensifies these concerns. In response to these growing risks, Chinese authorities themselves are reportedly considering restrictions on overseas access to their most advanced open-weight AI models. Premier Li Qiang emphasized

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