Just want to chime in on indie open source: I'm seeing many projects from chinese coders on Github since ~2022, I've come across some useful tools, mostly in the LLM space like OpenManus or Cherry Studio, but also documents like Siyuan, Univer. They seem pretty popular, even though many insist on inflating the stars at the beginning, for the initial boost on popularity.

Then there are the corporate-backed efforts from Bytedance, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, Huawei which are sometimes published here and make the news, several frameworks and engines.

Some projects only have a read-only mirror on Github, because all the work is done on their local alternatives like Gitee, or scattered around other places.

And well, anywhere you go a lot of software is disposable; integrations, widgets, things tailored to the local market, and so on... so that's probably why we don't see as much. I mean, it pales in comparison to the amount of culturally impactful software made back in the 80s and 90s, both in Europe and the US. But all things considered, I think they are catching up, and the traditional language barrier is breaking down, as in, I'm seeing more collaboration out in the open.