FWIW I am not American or even from the west. At a nation-state level, the west (US) shared knowledge with the intention of offshoring production for cheaper goods, not out of the kindness of their hearts. They still protect key technologies like the jet engine and bleeding edge fab tech. It is the same when it comes to Chinese companies that are at the top of their game - DJI or Bambu labs don't open source their designs last I checked, and their track record when it comes to software is also not great. Simply put, companies only open source when it makes business sense.

I am simply assuming that China follows the same principle - try to wring maximum advantage out of their industrial might and commoditize their complement wherever possible. Because of China's unique single party system, their strategies are very top-down coming straight from the CCP in key areas like AI and robotics. It is not racism, simply realpolitik.

The CCP strictly controls knowledge and information access within China through rigorous censorship. It would be surprising if Chinese companies were allowed to just make their advancements open source without review, if those advancements would have a meaningful impact on the state of technology.

It is strange and inappropriate to call that observation racist.

I don't think it's intentional racism, but a lot of what many western folks think of China come from propaganda. China has visa-free policy for many countries now. Go check it out in person.

To be clear, believing propaganda generally is also not racist, unless that propaganda is specifically racist. And even if you believe censorship and authoritarian oversight of companies by the CCP is western propaganda, it is still not racist.

Things are done for reasons.

We can discuss the reasons why they might or might not open source things, or we can agree not to because someone might call us racist for discussing corporate and wcenomic motivations.

The West mostly has not shared their knowledge. Most software is not open source.