Yes, that's what I meant. It's not that the Chinese will never be able to come up with models that superior --- it's simply that they will no longer have the incentive to open-source them once their models take the lead.

Training models are expensive. No one can do it for free for very long.

Maybe, or maybe they would take this opportunity to gain a lot of power and influence around the world.

Just because you're not paying per token or per month does not mean they are doing it for free.