China’s AI ascent leaves Trump a stark choice: escalate or relax chip controls?

US President Donald Trump’s landmark visit to China comes as the US-Iran war disrupts global energy supplies, fuels economic uncertainty and adds fresh strain to Washington-Beijing ties. In this story, part of a series examining how rivalry, interdependence and geopolitical crises are reshaping the relationship between the two powers, we examine how artificial intelligence (AI), chip controls and competing technology ecosystems are redefining US-China rivalry.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was the undisputed centre of attention at a 1,000-guest banquet in the heart of Beijing in July last year, attended by Chinese government officials, diplomats, businesspeople and industrial leaders.

Barely managing a few bites of his dinner, he breezed through a marathon of media interviews and accepted a stream of selfie requests from guests. The rock star treatment even spilled into the hotel lobby when he left, where Huang patiently signed autographs for star-struck fans.

The excitement was clear and perhaps understandable: Huang had arrived in Beijing with news that Nvidia’s H20 chip had just been cleared for export to the Chinese market. A watered-down version of Nvidia’s cutting-edge AI chips, the H20 still outperformed many Chinese rivals and, with tech giants in the world’s second-largest economy locked into Nvidia’s ecosystem, it appeared Washington had all but secured the company’s long-held dominance.

But after Huang flew home, the momentum soon shifted. Beijing started an investigation into the H20 citing security concerns, leading to a de facto import ban, and kept the door shut months later when Washington permitted exports of the more advanced H200, one of the company’s most powerful accelerators for advanced AI models – though still not its strongest.

The developments underscore the rapid rise of China’s AI industry and its decreasing reliance on Nvidia’s technology, even as chips remain at the heart of the US-China rivalry.

China’s AI ascent leaves Trump a stark choice: escalate or relax chip controls?

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