China is considering a significant expansion of export restrictions on artificial intelligence technologies, which could include a ban on domestic chipmakers using TSMC, restrictions on access to advanced AI models and training data, and regulation of foreign acquisitions of strategic technology firms. This is reported by the Financial Times, citing sources familiar with the discussions.
Consultations with tech giants
China's Ministry of Commerce (MofCom) has held talks with companies such as Alibaba, ByteDance, and Zhipu about possible restrictions on transferring important training data outside China and preventing foreign users from downloading model weights. The goal is to keep cutting-edge AI technologies under domestic control and slow the spread of Chinese AI standards globally.
Impact on open models
The restrictions would significantly affect companies like DeepSeek and Moonshot, which offer open-weight models. Closed models from Anthropic or OpenAI would remain unaffected, which could deprive Chinese companies of a competitive advantage.
Production at TSMC in question
The most controversial proposal is a ban on manufacturing advanced processors for Chinese designers (Alibaba, ByteDance, Huawei) in foreign factories, including TSMC. Shifting production to SMIC would secure orders for the domestic manufacturer, but Chinese companies would lose access to technologically more advanced hardware.
Acquisitions and regulation
Another upcoming measure involves stricter control of foreign acquisitions of Chinese technology companies, especially in the field of agentic AI. The changes are intended to close a regulatory loophole that allowed Meta to buy Manus for $2 billion – a transaction later canceled by Chinese authorities.
The measures could appear in the next revision of the catalog of technologies banned or restricted for export, which already includes rare earths and technologies for producing lithium batteries.