I can see how it would be in China's interest to make sure there was an LLM that produced cutting edge performance in Chinese-language conversations.

And some uses of LLMs are intensely political; think of a student using an LLM to learn about the causes of the civil war. I can understand a country wanting their own LLMs for the same reason they write their own history textbooks.

By releasing the weights they they can get free volunteer help, win hearts and minds with their open approach, weaken foreign corporations, give their citizens robust performance in their native language, and exercise narrative control - all at the same time.