China Weighs Curbs on Overseas Access to Advanced AI Models

The U.S.-China technology rivalry has widened from access to advanced chips and manufacturing equipment to control of model weights, training data and semiconductor designs. China has used open-weight systems from developers including Alibaba and DeepSeek to expand its global AI footprint, even as Washington restricted Chinese access to high-end computing. Beijing’s review signals that it, too, increasingly regards frontier AI as a strategic national asset whose transfer could affect national security and the country’s technological edge.

The Financial Times reported on July 21 that China’s Ministry of Commerce had consulted Alibaba, ByteDance, Zhipu, now known as Z.ai, and chip companies, citing two people involved. Options include curbing overseas transfers of training data and downloads of model weights while keeping cloud access available. Officials also sought views on blocking overseas manufacturers including TSMC and Qualcomm from making advanced chips based on designs from Huawei, Alibaba and ByteDance. No rules have been finalized.