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Beijing is set to limit access to Nvidia’s advanced H200 chips as it pushes to achieve self-sufficiency in semiconductor production despite Donald Trump’s decision to allow exports of technology to China.
Regulators in Beijing are discussing ways to allow limited access to Nvidia’s second-best generation of artificial intelligence chips, the H200, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
Buyers will likely have to go through an approval process, submit a request to buy chips and explain why domestic providers are unable to meet their needs, the people said.
People said no final decision has been taken yet.
Trump said in a Truth Social post on Monday that he had told Chinese President Xi Jinping that the US would allow Nvidia to “ship its H200 products to approved customers in China… under conditions that allow for continued strong national security. President Xi responded positively!”
Trump said that “the United States will be paid $25%”, without giving details of the arrangement.
Shipments to China of Nvidia’s H200 chips and other advanced processors critical to AI development were banned under the Biden administration over US concerns that they could be used in military applications.
Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang is lobbying to lift the restrictions, while proponents of exports argue they would help the US by making China dependent on American technology.
China has used the ban to push domestic chip makers to develop products to compete with Nvidia. These steps include increasing customs checks on chip imports and offering energy subsidies to data centers that use domestic chips.
The two regulators in charge of Beijing’s years-long semiconductor freedom campaign – the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology – may impose other measures to ensure the competitiveness of domestic chips, the people said, including banning China’s public sector from buying H200.
The return of Nvidia’s advanced chips will be welcomed by tech giants like Alibaba, ByteDance and Tencent, which are using more Chinese chips for some basic AI tasks but still prefer Nvidia’s products because of their high performance and easy maintenance.
Many of them are training their AI models abroad to access Nvidia chips that are restricted at home.
While Trump has signaled his approval of Nvidia’s exports of advanced chips to China, he faces opposition in Congress. A group of US senators has introduced legislation that would block the administration from approving exports of chips, including the H200, to China for 30 months.
Washington could also adopt an approval process that allows the sale of H200 chips only to companies it deems “safe,” people familiar with the matter said.
Nvidia has already been approved to export the H20, a weaker version of the H200 made specifically for China, after the company in August agreed to pay the US government 15 percent of its revenue from chip sales in China.
However, Beijing has restricted tech companies’ access to the H20, arguing that the chip’s performance is no better than Chinese alternatives.
In response to Trump’s Truth Social post, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said: “China has consistently advocated that China and the United States achieve mutual benefits and win-win results through cooperation.”
The NDRC and MIIT did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Additional contribution from Cheng Leng in Beijing
