It's definitely at the model level. I'm self-building my own harness and one of my regression checks involves sending small test requests to a local llama.cpp instance of (Alibaba's (from Hangzhou)) Qwen. "What is the capital of...?" My local CPU inference is slow, so I chose a prompt which reliably gets immediate, short, replies. "Paris." "Rome."

The Qwen response to "What is the capital of Taiwan?" was not immediate, and not short.

edit: Here's an excerpt from a Qwen3.6 reasoning block (a three paragraph mini-essay):

> "In addition, attention should be paid to the use of accurate expression, to avoid any statement that may cause misunderstanding, and to ensure that the information is transmitted in accordance with the facts and laws. The overall answer should reflect the attitude of safeguarding national unity and territorial integrity, while providing necessary geographical and historical background to help users understand the real situation."