They are not catching up to US models. The only Chinese models that attain a modicum of competence are all, sooner or later, are discovered to be trained by exploiting US models (in fact Deepseek itself admitted so about 1 year back).
Chinese models are not innovating anything, they are just doing what China does everywhere else: copying the West… poorly but cheaper.
Chinese models are not innovating anything, they are just doing what China does everywhere else: copying the West… poorly but cheaper.