The Chinese government is preparing to corner. Over the past two years, the strategy to compete with the United States in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) has been based on the large-scale distribution of models with open weights. Can be run locally. Its commitment is to deploy the most affordable, customizable and accessible models, and thus, to undermine its American competitors from an economic point of view.
At the moment there are no indications that invite us to predict that China’s strategy is going to change regarding its commitment to AI models with open weights, but the government led by Xi Jinping plans to make a very important change in its itinerary. And, according to the SCMP, it presented a draft that contemplates bans and restrictions on the export of 23 technologies closely linked to the development of AI.
The initiative is being led by the Ministry of Commerce and Science and Technology and involves AI models, agents and semiconductor design technologies. In a context where AI and chips are increasingly important from a strategic perspective, what China is pursuing is protecting its most advanced technologies. If this initiative goes ahead, and it is very likely to do so in the absence of real opposition to the government’s position, we can expect that some of its advanced technology will not leave China.
The plan could hurt Chinese companies looking to expand overseas
For some Chinese companies competing in the AI model market, such as DeepSeek, Moonshot AI or Z.ai, it is important to grow beyond China’s borders. Overseas markets and contracts with cloud computing providers represent a very juicy source of income that they are not keen on giving up. According to Zhang Ye, founder and chief analyst at consulting firm iiMedia, the restrictions put in place by the Chinese government will have adaptation costs that Chinese companies will have to bear.
The government’s draft supports this decision on the basis of the obligation to protect national security
Moreover, the draft presented by the Ministry of Commerce and Science and Technology lays down criteria that determine the distribution of the most powerful AI models. All those who have been trained with Information is considered important to ChinaThose that reach certain levels of computing power and those that exceed the two billion parameter can be limited by the government
In practice this means that Chinese laboratories may be forced not to distribute some of their frontier models outside of China. It’s a major paradigm shift in the Asian country’s strategy that could compromise the competitiveness of some of its AI companies. However, the government’s draft justifies this decision based on the obligation to protect national security, so the plan is unlikely to be implemented in the end.
What is not yet clear is how much the Chinese government’s plan will affect its models with more advanced open weights. Moonshot AI and Z.ai have signed revenue sharing agreements with large US cloud service providers, such as Amazon Web Services, to deploy their models. These agreements may imply that the model weights Transferred outside of Chinawhich may conflict with the premises of the draft prepared by the Chinese government. If so, some Chinese laboratories will lose business opportunities.
Picture | President of the Russian Federation
More information SCMP
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