Beijing tells companies to pause H200 purchases — China govt deliberating terms for letting local tech companies buy US chips while still growing homegrown semiconductors – Charm

Beijing has told Chinese tech companies to hold off on their plans to acquire Nvidia H200 chips, according to some sources. This is only a temporary measure, though, reports The Information, as the central government is considering how it will go forward with allowing local businesses acquire the latest chips they can without jeopardizing its long-term goal of building up its homegrown semiconductor industry.

President Donald Trump approved exports of the H200 early last month, with Washington, D.C., charging Nvidia a 25% fee for every H200 GPU exported to China. Even though the H200 chip is the last-generation GPU following the release of Blackwell AI GPU, Chinese companies are still lining up to get their hands on these relatively powerful chips that domestic chipmakers struggle to match. The Chinese government claims that homegrown semiconductors can now match H20 and RTX Pro 6000D chips, but these are still far behind the latest Blackwell and even the just-allowed full-fledged Hopper AI GPUs.

It might seem that this command to hold orders came suddenly, but Beijing has already been in discussion with its biggest tech giants following Trump’s reversal on the H200 ban. Despite the directive, several server manufacturers were said to have already placed non-refundable and non-modifiable orders with Nvidia. It’s also reported that the AI chip company is preparing a shipment of 82,000 GPUs, with the hardware expected to arrive by mid-February 2026. This shows that demand for these chips is so high that they’re willing to take the risk, as Beijing is still deciding on how it will approach the influx of these chips.

The biggest conundrum the CCP is facing is how it will balance the need to support local chipmaking initiatives without stunting AI development. China has made inroads in semiconductor manufacturing, but its latest chips still cannot compete with Nvidia’s last-generation offerings. One solution to this is to force companies importing foreign chips to purchase a ratio of or maybe even an equal amount of locally built processors. They could then use the domestically made semiconductors for inferencing tasks while reserving the more powerful H200 chips for training. But without an official announcement from Beijing, Chinese tech companies have no choice but to wait to know whether they could purchase Nvidia GPUs — and, if so, how many.