https://www.tomshardware.com/news/russia-alt-os-linux-china-loongson-loongarch
First Russian Linux OS ported to LoongArch.
From what I gather it seems like LoongArch is not RISCV, but takes some parts from it? But it is still a RISC ISA. I wonder why not just go all in on RISCV? This also does not seem to be open source either. I guess there is still a profit motive. Good news, but imo a bit of a shame that they aren't putting their effort into RISCV instead
RISCV is being focused on in China. It's just not a part of this particular development. I guess RISCV is not ready for production use at the current moment but it is likely to change in the future. Huawei for example is investing in RISCV.
On the other hand China has to balance the private economy to push forward as well in the tech industry, and LoongArch is perfect for that in a commercial context, especially now that US lawmakers are seeking to literally "block" China from using RISC-V (good luck with that), it at least provides an excuse, and plus it's far away enough from both MIPS and RISC-V to be categorized as its own thing. But no despair, there are great RISC-V projects out there, take a look at Milk-V, they released their Mars board and it's been a huge success. By no means is it being sidelined, but I also recognize as sobuddywhoneedsyou said below that RISC-V is relatively early in the adoption phase, especially with the ARM hype right now, so maybe going slow is for the best.