China's proposed artificial intelligence export curbs are designed to draw a line around the country's most valuable AI technology: models, data and technical expertise stay at home, while foreign customers get access through websites and cloud platforms.
That, at least, is the business model Beijing's leadership prefers — and according to a Reuters analysis published Wednesday, it is also the one the market was already converging on. "The structure the leadership prefers, with IP and R&D kept onshore and operations and access sold abroad, is the one the market was already converging on," said Alfredo Montufar-Helu, Beijing-based managing director at consultancy Ankura. For more context on this story, see our ongoing artificial intelligence updates.
The draft rules, released on October 16, would add 23 AI-related technologies to China's list of technologies banned or restricted from export. The list covers advanced models, agents that carry out tasks with limited human direction, and technology used to design chips and run vast computing facilities. A temporary requirement to register certain transfers with the government took effect immediately when the draft was published.
Three Tests Decide Which Models Are Covered
The draft specifies three tests for determining which AI models fall under the restrictions, and any one of them is enough:
1. Training compute. Models whose training required 10 to the power of 26 operations — a compute threshold that captures today's frontier systems.
2. Model size. Models with at least 2 trillion parameters.
3. Rankings. Models placing among the world's top 10 in certain assessments of performance, use or efficiency.
The ranking test is the most contentious. It could sweep in smaller systems that excel at specialized tasks, yet the draft does not identify which rankings would count. Liu Jing, a senior partner at Beijing Dacheng Law Offices who participated in consultations with policymakers, told Reuters that companies want more clarity on those tests.
Law firm Han Kun, in its own analysis, questioned how regulators would count the size of mixture-of-experts models, which activate only some of their components for each task. The firm also flagged that one proposed chip-design provision could reach beyond the most advanced products because it lacks a minimum performance requirement.
Services Abroad, Technology at Home
Under the new rules, overseas users would broadly be allowed to keep accessing Chinese AI through websites and cloud platforms. But transfers of the underlying technology — model weights, training data, know-how — or deployments of models on foreign infrastructure would be subject to government approval.
That distinction matters enormously for Chinese developers that rely on computing facilities abroad, where they can access the powerful chips that US export restrictions bar from entering China. Nvidia's most advanced processors cannot legally ship to the Chinese mainland, so some Chinese AI labs rent capacity at overseas data centers instead.
Researchers at major Chinese AI labs are now seeking clarification on whether they can continue to train or run their most advanced models on foreign-owned overseas servers, according to a person briefed on the discussions cited by Reuters. In a worst-case scenario, developers might have to maintain separate domestic and overseas versions of the same downloadable model.
DeepSeek, Moonshot and Z.AI Business Models in Focus
The rules could reshape how China's leading AI firms operate internationally. DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and Z.AI all offer models to overseas customers through websites or cloud platforms — a distribution pattern the curbs explicitly permit.
But the controls extend well beyond model releases. According to an analysis by law firm Fangda, the registration requirements that took effect on October 16 cover transfers that put Chinese technology under foreign ownership or control, including qualifying transactions already underway. Beijing's earlier move to order Meta to unwind its more than $2 billion acquisition of Chinese-founded AI startup Manus showed how much risk foreign buyers face.
Taslak, bilgi işlem merkezleri için yurt dışında kendi tesislerini inşa eden ve işleten Çinli şirketlere yönelik basitleştirilmiş onaylar sağlıyor ancak eşdeğer sistemler kurmak isteyen yabancı müşterilere teknoloji transferi için açık bir yol sunmuyor. Kontroller ayrıca, sınır modellerinin arkasındaki büyük ölçekli eğitim kümelerini yakalayan bir eşik olan 10.000'den fazla AI çipini koordine etmeye yönelik yöntemleri de kapsıyor.
ABD Kontrollerinin Aynası
Çinli hukukçular, yeni ortaya çıkan rejimi Washington'un kısıtlamalarının kasıtlı bir karşılığı olarak tanımlıyor. Jincheng, Tongda & Neal hukuk firmasının ortağı Yang Jingru, "ABD bilgi işlem gücü, donanım ve sermaye akışını kontrol ederken Çin, modellerin ve teknolojik varlıkların çıkışını sistematik olarak yönetmeye başlıyor" diye yazdı.
Güvenlik hususları ticari mantığa eşlik eder. Montufar-Helu, Pekin'in değerli teknolojik avantajları koruma hedefinin yanı sıra güçlü siber saldırı yeteneklerini ve hassas verileri Çin içinde tutmak istediğini belirtti.
Teklifler 15 Kasım'a kadar kamuoyunun yorumuna açık. Reuters'in aktardığı tartışmalara aşina bir kaynağa göre, Çin'in yıl sonuna kadar kuralları kabul etmesi ve ardından uygulama yönergelerini yayınlaması bekleniyor. Çin Ticaret Bakanlığı yorum talebine yanıt vermedi.
Kurallar yürürlüğe girdiğinde pratik ayrım çizgisi basit olacak: Yabancı müşteriler Çin yapay zekasını kullanabilir ancak ona sahip olamayacaklar.
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