they are keeping up. i have been using just chinese models for the last 2 years. chatgpt/gemini/claude have marketing. there's nothing that you can do with those models that can't be done with deepseek, glm or kimi. if there is, do let us know.

They can't attract a large contingent of users. Because despite being able to do everything the big name models can do, they cannot do it as well.

This aligns with the benchmarks as well; they benchmark great for what they are, but still bottom of the barrel when competing for "state of the art."

And yes, it's great you daily Chinese models, but the vast majority of people try them, say "impressive", then go back to the most performant models.

I'm not sure if you understood what OP meant by "marketing".

The downside of their efficiency and cost-ratio is that they undermine the circular economy of massive data centers, GPU sales, and VC money that is constructing an extremely wasteful bubble.

The bubble is there in China too, it's just on the governments books instead of private investors books.