So the evidence here is an Economist article saying 80% of startups use Chinese models and the Chinese companies own claims that they are close to frontier.

80% of startups using Chinese models is meaningless without knowing what proportion of spend and what proportion use American models.

The companies’ own claims are also not great evidence.

(I personally think the Chinese companies are winning and losing and the best evidence is Pareto frontier graphs from AA and Arena, which show Chinese companies winning in some segments but but definitely not a strong majority.)

Overall, with such a weak article and this hitting HN front page, what we learn from this is that a lot of people want these companies to win, which is interesting in and of itself.