There is intense pressure to publish as many papers as possible at Chinese universities. This has led to a big problem of faked or just bad research papers coming out of China, so people are generally skeptical of them

Citations. The early papers will be cited more often. And citations are kind of a currency in science.

There are no prizes for being second in science.

It's just a preprint. I appreciate the fast update of progress on a new development. Just don't give it the same weight as a peer reviewed piece.

Some background on the drama (and the rush to publish): https://www.reddit.com/r/redscarepod/comments/15egs7i/avg_ru...

and

https://twitter.com/8teAPi/status/1685294623449874432

The papers were totally rushed.

From what I understand it was discovered in 1999, hence LK99. Doesn't seem very quick to me in that case.