Why do they care about global usage though? This seems primarily so that they can control it for their billion plus population, they really don't need global users at all, much to our chagrin.
But if there's an open model available then they might choose that instead of either of them. Even if the Chinese models aren't used they will bring down profit margin just by existing. They wouldn't have the control the hosted American models give but that wasn't even on the table. But denying America control is a worthwhile strategic goal in and of itself. And they don't even need to expend extra resources to do it, they needed to develop their own models for security reasons anyway.
A model is never neutral. A model is always also a way of disseminating an ideology, and it doesn't need to be lying for that to work.
Consider the question "what caused the French revolution?"
There's many ways to answer this while being technically correct. What gets prioritized, what gets omitted, that's where the ideology lives.
(Unless someone totally bonkers spends thousands of hours and thousands of pages answering a single question)
But once we automate that, it drastically lowers the amount of viewpoints represented.
Because they help nudge to at least some infintesimally small, non-zero, degree.
This argument seems to apply to a much broader set of things than just “AI”.