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China has put domestic artificial intelligence chips on an official procurement list for the first time, bolstering the nation’s tech sector ahead of US President Donald Trump’s move to allow Nvidia exports to the country.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently added AI processors from Chinese groups including Huawei and Cambricon to its government-approved list of suppliers, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The step was designed to enhance the use of domestic semiconductors in China’s public sector and could be worth billions of dollars in new sales to local chipmakers.
That move came before Trump announced on Monday he was lifting US export controls and allowing Nvidia to ship its advanced H200 chips to “approved customers in China”. However, those sales could still be hampered by opposition from some Washington lawmakers and Chinese authorities.
China’s new procurement list has not yet been made public, but several government agencies and state-owned companies have already received the guidance document, said those familiar with the matter. While they have previously been urged to support local chipmakers, it is the first time public sector groups have received written instructions.
The move is a sign of Beijing’s determination to wean the country from relying on American technology and bolster its homegrown semiconductor industry in the AI race against the US.
The Information Technology Innovation List — known as Xinchuang in Chinese — serves as guidelines for government agencies, public institutions and state-owned companies that spend billions every year procuring IT products.
The list forms part of Beijing’s strategy to reduce China’s reliance on foreign products following Washington’s export controls.
Domestic microprocessors to replace those made by AMD and Intel, as well as operating systems to substitute Microsoft’s Windows, have been added to the list in the past few years.
This has led to the gradual phasing out of foreign technology products in China’s public institutions such as government offices, schools and hospitals, as well as state-owned companies.
The move also shows confidence that domestic AI chips have reached a performance level to replace their US counterparts, following a concerted push by Beijing to focus resources on the sector over the past few years.
China recently increased subsidies that cut energy bills by up to half for some of the country’s largest data centres, in a bid to help tech giants such as Alibaba and Tencent with the higher electricity costs of using less efficient domestic semiconductors.
The push to replace Nvidia’s technology with domestic counterparts has faced some resistance from companies.
An executive from a state-owned financial institute said that while they have allocated Rmb100mn ($14mn) to buy domestic AI chips from the list this year, most of these purchased Chinese processors the group has acquired are now sitting idle.
His firm’s quantitative trading models were built based on Nvidia’s hardware, and a switch to Huawei’s processors will result in a significant amount of adaptation work, including rewriting code in a language they are not familiar with.
Such reluctance to shift to a new architecture is common in a transition phase, according to one Chinese policymaker, who added that the country needed to gain greater technological independence. “The growing pains are unavoidable,” they said. “But we have to get there.”
The MIIT did not respond to requests for comment.
Additional reporting from Cheng Leng and Ryan McMorrow in Beijing