China drafts export controls on AI model weights and chip designs

On a Friday afternoon in mid-October, Beijing opened a month of public comment on an export catalogue that names large models, agents and chip design, and told exporters that registration for those listed technologies starts the same day. The catalogue looks, at first glance, like the chip-control instruments Western capitals have been writing for years. Read the annex and the spokesperson note together, though, and the live question sharpens: what happens when the weight file or the design package tries to leave China, and what stays sellable as a call to a model that never transfers?

MOFCOM and MOST opened Notice 2026 No. 48 with 23 AI technologies

The Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Science and Technology published Announcement 2026 No. 48 at 16:00 Beijing time on 16 October 2026. The notice rests on the Foreign Trade Law and the technology import and export rules. It proposes revisions to the Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited or Restricted from Export and, in the same paper, starts temporary pre-export registration until a formal revision takes effect.

The draft covers three fields and forty technologies: twenty-three in artificial intelligence (large models, agents, compute clusters and related information processing), five in biomedicine and twelve in photovoltaics. Comments run from 16 October to 15 November 2026 by email, fax or letter. The AI section repeats a carve-out that matters for open research: technologies that have already entered the public domain through open source, academic papers or similar means sit outside the proposed management scope.

A same-day MOFCOM spokesperson Q&A frames the revision as routine catalogue work that “does not target any particular country, region or entity.” The spokesperson gives the control split as fourteen technologies proposed for prohibition and twenty-six for restriction. Western wires the same day, including Bloomberg syndication in The Straits Times, the WSJ and the FT, read the package through US–China rivalry. The primary Chinese text is still a technology-catalogue revision with an immediate registration clock; rivalry is colour readers should keep in a separate column from the statute path.

Annex thresholds hitch on 10²⁶ FLOPs, 2 trillion parameters and a top-10 ranking

The detailed numbers sit in Annex 1, a word-processor attachment to the notice. Careful secondary counts of that annex (On The Wire; CTOL) match the ministry’s sector totals and put flesh on the AI rows.

For restricted “core” large-model technology, the annex lists weights, key checkpoints, underlying source code, architecture design, training optimisation and inference acceleration. Secondary annex reads say the item is restricted if any one of three conditions is met: training compute of at least 10²⁶ floating-point operations; at least 2 trillion parameters; or capability at a “globally leading” level, defined as a ranking in the global top 10 of public evaluations at the time of export. Bloomberg-derived coverage has pointed to models such as Kimi K3 and Alibaba’s Qwen3.8-Max as illustrations of the parameter gate. Those names are secondary colour until MOFCOM publishes a named list of its own.

Chip entries in the annex aim at design technology. Finished GPUs leaving a dock sit on a different legal track. Secondary reads describe AI processor design caught when any one of several conditions applies, including a process at 14 nanometres or finer, advanced packaging, high-speed interconnect, or certain driving, vision or speech uses. Memory-chip design and cluster know-how have their own limits. A large cluster is defined as more than about 10,000 AI accelerator cards. Restricted AI rows also reach agents (with planning and tool-use thresholds in the annex notes) and AI-assisted vulnerability discovery. Proposed prohibitions in the AI field, per the spokesperson and annex counts, include AI-driven generation and mutation of malicious code aimed at critical infrastructure, defence or core government systems, plus large models that serve users after training on China’s “core data.”

The usable public record is a set of numeric gates on portable model assets and design know-how. The slogan version of an “AI export ban” overstates what Friday’s paper actually wrote.

The annex reaches weight files and chip designs; product APIs still clear the spokesperson’s line

The Monday stake is narrower than the headline count of forty technologies. Beijing is writing control around the portable frontier asset: weights, checkpoints, source, architecture and chip design, the materials a foreign buyer can take home and rebuild on. How those files move is the compliance question that changed on Friday. How a customer calls a hosted model is answered in the same package under a different heading.

The spokesperson is explicit on that product side. Once measures are formally in force, the ministry says, the great majority of AI technology can still be exported freely. For restricted large models, offering API calls, app or web interaction, SaaS applications or lightweight on-device deployment sits outside model-technology export management. Overseas localised deployment of a restricted AI technology remains in scope. Deployment on a company’s own overseas cloud, described as relatively controllable, may qualify for automatic licensing and similar facilitation.

Open source runs on two tracks in the same package. Technology already public through open source or papers is proposed out of the management scope. Future open-sourcing of listed technologies, along with Chinese firms building their own overseas compute centres, taping out chips abroad, running joint research with overseas resources, or working on international standards, is slated for automatic licensing described as close to “report and ship.” Releasing a restricted technology openly later would therefore travel as a facilitation lane, while the already-public exclusion covers what is already out.

The practical pattern the draft seems to reward is service abroad that leaves the weight file at home. A foreign customer can keep calling a Chinese model. A foreign buyer who wants the transferable asset faces registration now and, if the draft hardens, a restricted or prohibited line later.

Temporary registration already binds unfinished ownership and licence deals

Comment periods usually feel like policy theatre. This one came with an immediate paperwork duty. From publication until the revised catalogue is formally implemented, technology-export operators must register on MOFCOM’s unified business platform before exporting technologies listed in the notice’s annex. Exports already under way but not yet complete sit inside that registration net.

The announcement names the deals that count: transferring technology ownership abroad (including intellectual-property transfer); licensing a domestic technology for use abroad; changing the owner or actual controller of a domestic technology to a foreign party; and other cases MOFCOM specifies by notice. Registration fields include the exporter and recipient, destination country or region, the technology and its use, and an estimated export value. Photovoltaic key equipment that carries listed technology is also pulled into registration under the notice’s framing.

The legal track matters for counsel who might reach for the Export Control Law dual-use lists by reflex. Notice 2026 No. 48 is written as technology-catalogue management under the Foreign Trade Law and the technology import and export rules. Products made using the listed technologies are, on the spokesperson’s account, outside the management scope. The temporary duty still binds the transfer forms the ministry lists, even while the annex remains a draft for comment.

Friday’s notice still leaves the final catalogue and ranking method open

It is easy to over-read the notice. Public comment is open until 15 November. The annex thresholds can move. Automatic licensing language is facilitation policy in a spokesperson note and annex notes; it has not been tested as a right in court. The ministry’s claim that the revision targets no country is primary Chinese framing. It leaves unsettled how trading partners will experience the list, and it sits beside a rivalry reading in Western wires that the Chinese text does not adopt.

The package also stops short of proving that Chinese labs will halt overseas product shipping. The spokesperson’s carve-outs for API, SaaS, app and lightweight on-device access keep product routes open while the transfer routes tighten. Secondary coverage that treats the draft as an immediate wall against DeepSeek-style overseas growth overstates what the registration clock alone can do. Registration creates visibility and process. A published licence refusal is a later document, if it comes.

Annex detail that arrives only through secondary counts of a .wps attachment should stay labelled as such until readers can open the same file. The thresholds cited here are consistent across careful English reads of that annex. The authoritative text remains the Chinese attachment MOFCOM published with the notice.

Final thresholds, ranking methodology and the post-comment catalogue remain unsettled

What is still missing is the paper that would let a careful buyer price the final wall. The post-comment catalogue has not been published. There is no official English annex. There is no published methodology for how a “global top 10” public-evaluation ranking will be judged at the moment of export. There is no decision record showing how automatic licensing will behave when a politically sensitive recipient appears on a form. Core-data and important-data model entries still need to be read beside China’s data-security definitions by counsel who touch domestic training corpora.

For Chinese frontier labs, chip designers, overseas acquirers and cloud buyers, the Monday posture is already concrete even while the draft moves. Treat weight-file transfers, design-IP licences and foreign-control changes involving listed technologies as registration events now. Price an API or SaaS contract on its own facts; taking the weights home is a separate registration problem. Watch the 15 November comment close for whether the 10²⁶ / 2-trillion / top-10 gates survive, and whether the API carve-out stays in the spokesperson’s form. Marketing that turns Friday’s notice into a total AI export shutdown is already ahead of the paperwork, and so is marketing that treats the month of comment as empty theatre.

The open question after 15 November is whether Beijing can keep policing the portable asset and still sell the product surface at scale. Notice 2026 No. 48 opened that story. The public record has not finished it.