My conspiracy theory is that this is the new space race, and the CCP encourages this to show the world what Chinese engineers are capable of, and tank the Anthropic/OpenAI valuation bubble as a desirable side effect.
Oh no, 1kkk market country with top-tier research labs developing its own technology, must be evil!
Half of the engineers at OAI and Anthropic are Asian, I don't think China does all these for signaling.