You can also make a pretty good case that exactly what you just said, rather than being a demonstration of how free and open the American system is, is a demonstration of how advanced the American system is, wrapping its controls around you with no target to blame or lobby for changes. Is China "more" authoritarian than the American/Western system... or is the American/Western system actually just that much better than China at it?

They are both government enforced. The USA administration is using early access and export control restrictions to do their enforcing.

As for the effects: while I'm told the Chinese government is sensitive to some internal political topics, I've never seen it myself. I guess that's because I don't write code dealing on Tiananmen square or similar topics, and I don't know anyone who does. In contrast the restrictions on the USA models are a right proper pain in the arse. Hugging Face being forced to swap Chinese models to defend against the OpenAI GPT attack is a good an illustration as any.

That said, these USA restrictions are a new thing that seemed to start with Mythos - which means around 6 months ago. The Chinese models are (pull number out of the air) 6 months behind, so maybe in 2027 the Chinese models will start behaving like the current US SOTA ones.

The security of American hedgemony, and legal restrictions that are due to laws enacted by the American government

You're using different words to describe the same thing, but trying to imply America's reasons are moral