Opinion | Asia is reaching for the open road that Chinese AI offers

Ah, marvellous. Asia's finance ministers have gathered in Chengdu for the APEC digital technology and AI forum and emerged with a statement, heavy with the authority of a group of people who have just discovered open-source, declaring their ringing support for open Chinese AI models. The pitch is simple: open models cost 60 to 90 per cent less to operate than leading American systems, a saving so remarkable that you'd almost think it had no hidden costs attached. Which is, of course, exactly the kind of cost saving that has historically preceded a government discovering its critical infrastructure is running on software nobody can patch, audit, or sue.

The opinion writers would have you believe that this is 'the open road' — a phrase that suggests glorious freedom, rather than the usual story of open weights, closed accountability, and a subtle transfer of dependence from Silicon Valley to an entity in Beijing with no export controls and no press release schedule. Governments across Asia are 'building their own systems' on these models, which is marvellous news right up until the moment you realise that building on someone else's open road usually means paying tolls in the form of data, strategic alignment, or both. And if the APEC ministers were troubled by that thought, their statement gives no hint of it.

Do not misunderstand: the 60 to 90 per cent saving is real, and that is precisely why it is dangerous. Every finance ministry loves a bargain; every security service loathes an unexamined dependency. One imagines the ministers in Chengdu nodding along to a statement supporting open-source AI the way one imagines bankers in 2007 nodding along to collateralised debt obligations. The SCMP opinion column assures us that this is an 'open road' to Asian self-reliance, which is very much what the last fellow promised before the road turned into a toll scheme. The open road, as ever, is paved not with good intentions but with someone else's cost savings. Enjoy the drive.