Chinese technology giants Alibaba and OSChina have built domestic alternatives to U.S.-based Hugging Face after Beijing blocked the platform in 2023. Alibaba's ModelScope, launched in 2022, now hosts more than 170,000 models and has accumulated 250 million users. OSChina's MoArk, introduced in 2023, provides access to approximately 20,000 models.
Hugging Face, acquired by Nvidia for $12.9 billion in September, remains the global leader with over 3 million open models. But its intermittent accessibility in China has cemented ModelScope's dominance within the Chinese developer community.
Open models allow developers to download, fine-tune, and deploy AI on local hardware—a flexibility critical for China's goal of fostering domestic innovation while maintaining data sovereignty. Unlike proprietary systems from OpenAI and Anthropic, these platforms give developers full control over model customization and deployment.
Xu Yong, chief executive of OSChina, said not all users can consistently employ VPNs to access foreign platforms. He emphasized the necessity for China to cultivate a self-reliant AI ecosystem to serve the Chinese-speaking population, comparing it to the growth of China's internet industry behind the Great Firewall. He added that China is developing its independent AI ecosystem faster than during the internet era.
Beijing's approach mirrors its handling of GitHub, the Microsoft-owned open-source code platform. GitHub was briefly blocked in 2013, prompting strong objections from programmers. Access was later restored, and Chinese developers have continued using it as a gateway to the global software community. In 2020, Beijing endorsed Gitee, a domestic GitHub alternative also owned by OSChina.
This pattern—blocking a foreign service, allowing domestic alternatives to flourish, and sometimes tolerating circumvention for specific professional use—reflects China's strategy of ensuring domestic control while preventing isolation from global technological progress, particularly in critical sectors like artificial intelligence.
