>2) China distills and is therefore possibly not that competent.

I think deepseek at least has done enough innovative work that you could grant them a baseline of competency.

In general, there are enough papers coming out of China to suggest that there are quite a few people there who know what they are doing.

You're correct and I shouldn't have used the word competent. Perhaps "and is therefore not elite enough to be state of the art"?

I also have a soft spot for deepseek because they write such readable papers. I don't have a degree in anything but with a little work I can understand their papers - which I really appreciate.

But I still think my point stands - if you need distillation you won't be SOTA