China considers strengthening export controls on AI models and chips - FT
Kyiv • UNN
Chinese regulators are considering restrictions on transferring AI training data abroad and producing chips based on Chinese developments. The new measures could become the most significant update to export controls in recent years.
In China, regulators are considering tightening export controls over artificial intelligence and semiconductor technologies amid the intensifying US-China rivalry in the field of advanced AI technologies, reports the Financial Times, writes UNN.
Details
According to two sources involved in the discussions, regulators led by China's Ministry of Commerce are consulting with leading domestic groups involved in AI and chip manufacturing on how to prevent Western countries from acquiring advanced Chinese technologies and promising startups.
According to the sources, the Ministry of Commerce discussed with AI companies, including Alibaba, ByteDance, and Zhipu, the issue of restricting the transfer of key data for training their models abroad, as well as allowing foreign users to download model weights. However, China will still allow foreign customers access to models and services.
Last week, Chinese AI lab Moonshot released its Kimi K3 model, which surpassed Anthropic's flagship Opus 4.8 model on most metrics, demonstrating that China has significantly narrowed the gap with the United States in the field of advanced AI technologies.
Leading Chinese models from Moonshot and DeepSeek are so-called open-weight, allowing users to download them to their local servers and customize them to their needs. At the same time, leading American models from Anthropic and OpenAI are closed.
According to sources, China's Ministry of Commerce also solicited opinions on possible restrictions that could prevent foreign chip manufacturers, including Qualcomm and TSMC, from producing advanced semiconductors based on developments by Chinese companies such as Huawei, Alibaba, and ByteDance.
Potential restrictions may also be imposed on foreign acquisitions of strategic technology groups in areas such as agentic AI, sources said. This is primarily aimed at closing a loophole that, in Beijing's view, led to Meta's acquisition of Manus for $2 billion, a deal that Chinese authorities subsequently ordered to be terminated.
The new measures could be included in the next revision of China's catalog of technologies prohibited or restricted for export, sources said, reflecting Beijing's confidence that it has taken a leading position in the world in some areas of AI.
According to sources, most of the proposals are still in the discussion stage, and regulators are taking into account industry feedback before making a final decision.
They added that technology companies have told regulators that some of these stricter measures will slow down their AI development and harm China's potential in the race for technological leadership.
The catalog is one of China's three main export control regimes, along with two control lists covering dual-use goods. In its latest revision in 2025, several lithium-ion battery production technologies were added to the restricted export list, complementing existing controls over strategically important technologies such as rare earth element mining and processing.
According to sources, the update being discussed and agreed upon will be the most significant in recent years.