China has approved its first batch of Nvidia H200 AI accelerator imports totaling several hundred thousand units, according to Reuters sources, during CEO Jensen Huang's visit to the country. The move comes despite ongoing US export controls designed to limit China's access to advanced computing technology.
China has granted import approval for several hundred thousand Nvidia H200 AI accelerators, according to Reuters sources familiar with the matter. The authorization coincided with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's visit to China this week, signaling continued demand for high-performance AI chips despite US export restrictions.
What's New in the H200 Architecture
The H200, announced in November 2025, represents Nvidia's latest data center GPU featuring several key upgrades:
- 141GB HBM3e Memory: Nearly doubles the H100's capacity (80GB) with 4.8TB/s bandwidth
- Transformer Engine Improvements: 1.9x faster inference for large language models versus H100
- FP8 Precision Support: Enhanced performance for mixed-precision AI workloads
Benchmarks show the H200 delivers approximately 25% higher performance than the H100 on GPT-3 175B inference tasks when paired with equivalent CPU and memory configurations.
Geopolitical Context and Technical Limitations
This approval comes three months after the US Department of Commerce tightened export controls to close loopholes that allowed Chinese entities to access restricted chips through cloud services and third countries. The H200's peak theoretical performance (5,200 TOPS) exceeds current US export thresholds (4,800 TOPS), raising questions about compliance mechanisms.
Industry analysts note two probable scenarios:
- Downgraded Variants: Nvidia may have developed China-specific H20 chips with reduced specifications
- Special Exemptions: Chinese regulators could be exploiting carve-outs for civilian AI applications
"The approved chips likely operate below 4,800 TOPS through firmware locks or architectural modifications," said Linley Gwennap of The Linley Group. "Nvidia has demonstrated this capability with previous China-market products like the A800 and H800."
Market Impact and Domestic Alternatives
The approved shipment volume (estimated 300,000-500,000 units) represents approximately 20% of Nvidia's projected 2026 H-series production capacity. Chinese tech giants including Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu are expected to be primary recipients as they race to deploy 100+ trillion parameter models.
Despite this development, China continues pushing domestic alternatives:
- Huawei Ascend 910B: 640 TOPS performance with 80GB HBM2e memory
- Biren BR104: 512 TOPS using 7nm process technology
- Cambricon S5000: 560 TOPS with proprietary MLUv03 architecture
These domestic chips still lag Nvidia's offerings in memory bandwidth (2.5TB/s vs 4.8TB/s) and software ecosystem maturity. MLPerf benchmarks show Huawei's best-performing chip delivers approximately 68% of the H100's throughput on BERT-Large inference tasks.
Strategic Implications
The approval highlights China's determination to maintain AI development momentum despite US restrictions. However, it comes with significant constraints:
- Performance Gap: Even modified H200s will underperform global counterparts
- Supply Chain Risks: Ongoing US pressure could disrupt future shipments
- Cost Premium: Chinese buyers reportedly pay 25-40% premiums for modified Nvidia chips
"This is a tactical victory but strategic vulnerability," noted Tristan Harris of the AI Now Institute. "China's AI ecosystem remains dependent on Western semiconductor innovation while facing mounting technical debt from fragmented hardware ecosystems."
Nvidia declined to comment on specific customer shipments but reiterated its commitment to compliance with all export regulations. The US Department of Commerce has yet to issue a public response to the reported approvals.
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