This is part of China's effort to have its own IC industry. The project is now owned by BOSC, Beijing Open Source Chip Research Instiutute[1]
That being said, RISC-V is gaining a lot of traction. I wouldn't be surprised if it starts to become a real challenge to ARM in the next five years. You just need mature tooling and better cores. Probably also need a wider variety of smaller cores for embedded applications available at the right price points.
Open Source Chips to Benefit the World
There is no EN on any deeper, direct linked url. But once chosen from the top it sticks.
I was more talking about the government though, which isn't otherwise famous for it's love of openness. I'm not aware of any government currently promoting FOSS/FOSH as much as China's is.