For Beijing, managing AI requires walking a razor’s edge: seal off domestic internet users from foreign influence, but keep China’s top developers linked to the global cutting edge.
When Chinese regulators blocked U.S.-based open-source hub Hugging Face in 2023, it opened a market for domestic alternatives — even as the government quietly tolerates artificial intelligence labs bypassing the block to share Chinese models with the world.
In the AI era, China is developing an independent ecosystem faster than in the internet era.”Xu Yong, chief executive of OSChina
AlibabaAlibabaAlibaba, founded in 1999 by Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma, is one of the most prominent global e-commerce companies that operates platforms like AliExpress, Taobao, and Tmall.READ MORE had launched a Hugging Face-like open-model platform, ModelScope, in 2022, which now hosts more than 170,000 models. Tech company OSChina launched another open-model site, MoArk, in 2023, serving some 20,000 models.
“Not everyone is able to use a VPN [virtual private network] all the time,” Xu Yong, chief executive of OSChina, told Rest of World. Just as China’s internet industry had flourished behind the Great Firewall, the country also needed to build a self-reliant AI ecosystem to serve the Chinese-speaking population, Xu said.
“In the AI era, China is developing an independent ecosystem faster than in the internet era,” Xu said.
Unlike closed models from OpenAI and Anthropic, which are only accessible through their companies, open models can be downloaded, fine-tuned, and deployed on local hardware.
There is still this real concern in China that access to [the U.S.-based platforms] could be disrupted at any point.” Rebecca Arcesati, researcher with the think tank Mercator Institute for China Studies
New York-based Hugging Face has become the most popular place to share open models and data sets. In September, Nvidia announced it was acquiring Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, as the chipmaker bets on growing adoption of open-source models.
Beijing regulators did not disclose a specific reason when it blocked access to Hugging Face, but the Chinese government routinely blocks foreign websites that can host information it deems harmful. Chinese authorities occasionally penalized citizens for circumventing the Great Firewall without authorization. But VPN use is common in the tech industry, as developers need to access blocked sites such as Google and X in their work.
Chinese programmers have turned to global open-source platforms to share texts and images that would be censored at home. On GitHub, the Microsoft-owned platform that hosts open-source code, Chinese programmers have staged protests against long working hours and preserved news articles about Covid-19 lockdowns that had been removed from the Chinese internet.
China briefly blocked GitHub in 2013, triggering an outcry from programmers. Access was later restored. The government in 2020 endorsed Gitee, a domestic version of GitHub also owned by OSChina. But GitHub remains popular in China as the gateway to the global software community.
A wary eye on U.S. regulators
Rebecca Arcesati, a Brussels-based researcher with the think tank Mercator Institute for China Studies, said the Chinese government recognized that access to international open-source platforms was important to the development of its tech industry.
Chinese AI companies have been releasing powerful open models on Hugging Face so they can be downloaded and deployed across the world. Developers in China also need to access open models shared by people outside China.
At the same time, the government also believes that domestic platforms are more secure and reliable than those controlled by American companies and subject to U.S. regulations.
The Trump administration, which is keen on ensuring America’s lead in AI, has reportedly discussed bans on Chinese models. In a regulatory filing about the acquisition of Hugging Face, Nvidia flagged the risk that regulators could ban Chinese models from being shared on the site.
“There is still this real concern in China that access to [the U.S.-based platforms] could be disrupted at any point,” Arcesati said. “From the Chinese government’s perspective, it will be ideal if the entire technology stack for AI, including the software tools and libraries, could be indigenized as much as possible.”
“It’s our mission”
Both ModelScope and MoArk offer services similar to Hugging Face, including model testing and customization. They offer some free usage and charge users for extra computing power and advanced features.
But the number of models on the two Chinese platforms still fall far behind Hugging Face, which hosts more than 3 million open models. ModelScope said in March that it had 170,000 models and 250 million users. Xu said MoArk hosted more than 20,000 commonly used models.
To attract users, ModelScope has hosted university hackathons, where students compete to build AI applications. It also opened a coworking and event space in Hangzhou for AI entrepreneurs.
The Chinese AI industry has faced a shortage of computing power as the U.S. has banned sales of top AI chips to China. Several local companies are now racing to build advanced chips.
MoArk has deployed a team of engineers to adapt AI models to run on different types of Chinese chips, as a way to establish itself as part of China’s own AI ecosystem, according to Xu. “It’s our mission to make sure mainstream open models can run on Chinese chips,” Xu said.
AI developers in China say the main attraction of the domestic platforms is faster download speeds, though they still prefer accessing Hugging Face with a VPN. “Hugging Face and GitHub are the default in the open-source space. They offer a greater variety,” Chen Yunfei, an independent AI developer in Kunming, told Rest of World. “Domestic platforms need to convince us why we should use them.”