> There is little doubt that China will start to follow suit.

According to who? China loves picking up the slack that America drops. When America turns it's nose up at slave labor, China exports Xinjiang cotton. When Americans get iffy about manufacturing chemicals and refining rare earths, China does the dirty work at-cost. When Russians need weapons, China crosses the sanctions to deliver them.

My nearest estimation is that China will make some kind of announcement declaring no intention to limit AI exports. A lot of their leverage stems from undermining American control of AI research, which they can continue to escalate by offering no/low guidelines models to foreign customers. America's stance on this is overly politicized, which is a prime opportunity for China to look like the adult in the room (and get paid in the process).

I agree. China has a huge opportunity to boost its soft power globally as US companies pull back from the world stage. It would be very short-sighted of China to miss out on this. Chinese LLMs are trained with pro-CCP biases (e.g. Taiwan); when people use their official APIs, they can spy on user activity all over the world. I will be surprised if they follow suit.

Yep. China will take this opportunity to maximize their growth.