Chinese authorities are considering expanding export controls to cover advanced artificial intelligence and semiconductor technologies, a move that would significantly strengthen Beijing’s oversight of strategic technologies as competition with the United States increasingly extends beyond hardware to AI models, algorithms and chip design.
According to a Financial Times report on Tuesday, regulators are consulting leading Chinese technology companies on a range of potential restrictions aimed at preventing advanced domestic AI capabilities and semiconductor intellectual property from flowing overseas.
The discussions show Beijing now sees frontier AI technologies as strategic national assets, mirroring Washington’s restrictive approach to advanced chips, AI models and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. The reported measures would mark another escalation in the global technology rivalry, with both the United States and China moving to limit the international transfer of technologies viewed as critical to national security and economic competitiveness.
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The report follows Reuters’ exclusive reporting earlier this month that Chinese authorities had convened meetings with major technology companies to discuss restricting overseas access to China’s most advanced AI models, including next-generation systems that have yet to be released publicly.
Those discussions highlighted growing concerns within Beijing that capable Chinese AI models could strengthen foreign competitors or be incorporated into overseas AI ecosystems. Rather than focusing solely on hardware exports, regulators are now examining ways to control the movement of AI capabilities themselves, including model parameters, training data and underlying technologies.
The latest consultations suggest China is developing a comprehensive export-control framework covering both physical semiconductor technologies and intangible AI assets.
According to the Financial Times, China’s Ministry of Commerce has been consulting AI developers including Alibaba, ByteDance and Zhipu regarding restrictions on transferring sensitive AI training data outside China.
Officials are also reportedly evaluating whether companies should be prevented from allowing foreign users to download model weights, the numerical parameters that determine how AI systems perform after training.
Model weights are regarded as strategically valuable because they enable developers to reproduce and fine-tune sophisticated AI systems without repeating the expensive training process. Restricting access to those weights would represent a significant shift toward tighter government oversight of China’s open-weight AI ecosystem, which has expanded rapidly over the past year through companies including Moonshot AI, Z.ai, MiniMax and Alibaba.
The discussions come as Chinese firms have narrowed the performance gap with leading U.S. AI developers by releasing capable open-weight models at substantially lower operating costs.
Chip Design Exports May Also Face New Controls
Beyond artificial intelligence, regulators are reportedly considering measures that would restrict overseas production of advanced semiconductors designed by Chinese companies. The proposals could prevent foreign foundries, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and Qualcomm’s manufacturing partners, from fabricating cutting-edge chips based on designs developed by Chinese firms such as Huawei, Alibaba and ByteDance.
Such restrictions would represent a notable expansion of China’s export-control regime by focusing not only on manufacturing equipment and materials but also on semiconductor intellectual property. The move could complicate global semiconductor supply chains by limiting where Chinese-designed chips can be manufactured, particularly as U.S. export controls have already reduced Chinese access to the world’s most advanced fabrication technologies.
Potential Inclusion in Export-Control Catalogue
According to the report, the proposals could eventually be incorporated into the next revision of China’s catalogue of technologies that are prohibited or restricted from export.
That catalogue serves as the legal foundation for Beijing’s export-control regime and has increasingly been used to protect technologies viewed as strategically important. Officials are reportedly gathering feedback from industry participants before determining which technologies should ultimately be included.
The report also said regulators are considering restrictions on overseas acquisitions involving strategic technologies, including emerging areas such as agentic AI, where autonomous software systems perform complex tasks with limited human intervention.
The reported measures underscore how the technology competition between China and the United States has broadened significantly. Initially centered on semiconductor manufacturing equipment and advanced processors, the rivalry now encompasses AI models, algorithms, computing infrastructure, critical minerals and intellectual property.
Washington has imposed stringent restrictions on exports of advanced AI chips, semiconductor equipment and related technologies to China, while tightening rules designed to prevent Chinese entities from accessing advanced computing power through third countries. China has responded by accelerating domestic semiconductor development, expanding export controls on critical minerals including gallium, germanium and rare earth elements, and promoting indigenous AI ecosystems built around domestic hardware such as Huawei’s Ascend processors.
The latest proposals suggest Beijing is now moving toward a more comprehensive strategy that treats advanced AI systems and semiconductor designs as strategic technologies warranting export restrictions comparable to those already applied to critical minerals and other sensitive technologies.
The new controls, if implemented, are expected to further fragment global technology supply chains and reinforce the emergence of separate AI and semiconductor ecosystems led by the United States and China.