China is an enormous market, with very few patents. In that sense it makes a lot of sense to launch things there if you are a start-up with non copyable things (know-of and expertise).
A 95% open phone with a half-closed UI cannot be protected against porting.
A copy cat won't spend the resource to maintain the last 5% (not competitive against using android), and while the community can, whatever the community produces is rarely fit for commercial purpose.
All in all, I think that way you can go mostly open source and fully community friendly, while being not too much of a target for both giants and copy-cats.
Still a risky plan, but let's hope for the best.