UC Berkeley receives hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from the U.S. Federal government, and some of that is certainly going to the BAR (and they are by far not the only ones). India is outright commissioning the research and design of at least four distinct RISC-V chips (SHAKTI) through IIT Madras. And (although the absolute amounts are smaller, the proportion is not really) many smaller countries through institutions like ETH Zürich are spending a lot of money on microarchitecture and IC design research, most with RISC-V involved.

When it comes to IC design more broadly, just put in Google/DDG the name of an industrial nation and a couple other related words, and enjoy the results.

I could think of more if it was my job, but I don't see why you'd dismiss it out of hand. Why would it be so personally important to you that the Chinese government is seen as greatest state sponsor of microarchitectural research using RISC-V?