China's government is reportedly considering allowing domestic tech giants to purchase new Nvidia chips, easing enforcement of U.S. export controls.
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has asked several domestic technology companies, including ByteDance and Alibaba, to report their plans to purchase Nvidia's RTX Pro 5500 chips. The ministry has signaled to some companies its intention to approve such purchases, with industry executives anticipating that the RTX Pro 5500 will avoid export restrictions.
Released earlier this month, Nvidia's RTX Pro 5500 is a Blackwell-generation professional workstation GPU expected to fall outside the data centre accelerator category—the primary target of U.S. export controls. This classification could give China greater leeway in acquiring advanced semiconductor chips. Companies including ByteDance, Alibaba, Moonshot AI, and Tencent have previously sought to circumvent export controls by accessing Nvidia chips through data centres in Thailand, Malaysia, and Japan.
The MIIT's signal follows a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping where semiconductor export controls received relatively little attention. The meeting did extend the trade war truce, raising questions about the future of China's critical mineral export controls, which could impact the semiconductor industry. The decision also builds on earlier Chinese easing of restrictions on Nvidia H200 chips.
In response to inquiries, an Nvidia spokesperson stated that "U.S. firms continue to be restricted by a combination of outdated U.S. export controls, which cover gaming products released nearly a half a decade ago, and China's own limits on U.S. imports." Jensen Huang, Nvidia's founder and CEO, has further highlighted the company's frustration with semiconductor export controls, expressing a desire to "serve the world, compete for the world."
The MIIT's encouragement of RTX Pro 5500 purchases and the easing of H200 restrictions underscore China's continued dependence on Nvidia chips and the fragility of semiconductor supply chains in the face of export controls. The timing—between Nvidia's product announcement and the MIIT's signals—suggests China will continue pursuing advanced chips from the world's leading manufacturer while export classifications remain unsettled. The RTX Pro 5500's categorization offers China access to cutting-edge semiconductor products without export control burdens.
China's willingness to acquire the RTX Pro 5500 may also represent a complementary strategy to its domestic chipmaking efforts, providing short-term relief to growing demand for AI compute. While the MIIT's announcement initially pressured Chinese semiconductor manufacturer stock prices, limited imports could help address the ongoing global chip shortage as China's domestic industry develops through initiatives like Big Fund III.
This diversification of semiconductor suppliers could relieve pressure on domestic chip manufacturers, allowing them to develop with less competitive urgency, or it could spur innovation against stronger Nvidia competition. Either path could strengthen China's semiconductor industry long-term, reinforcing its strategic autonomy in chip manufacturing and AI development. Such an outcome would also advance China's digital sovereignty by consolidating semiconductor production domestically and securing supply chains for the other critical technologies the country depends on.