President Trump flew to Beijing, brought Jensen Huang along at the last minute, and left two days later, telling reporters that \u201csomething could happen\u201d on chip exports. Nothing did. Not a single Nvidia H200 has shipped to China since Trump\u00a0first authorised\u00a0the sales in December 2025, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told\u00a0Bloomberg\u00a0that semiconductor controls were not even on the bilateral agenda.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The summit theatre obscured a more interesting development underneath it. The H200 isn\u2019t stuck because Washington won\u2019t allow it. Washington already has. Roughly 10 Chinese firms, including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and JD.com, hold\u00a0approved\u00a0US export licences for up to 75,000 units each, with Lenovo and Foxconn authorised as distributors. The chips aren\u2019t moving because Beijing won\u2019t let its own companies take delivery.<\/p>\n
Two frameworks, one deadlock<\/p>\n
The mechanics of the stalemate are worth understanding clearly. US rules require that all H200 chips ordered by Chinese clients be used only in China. Beijing, meanwhile, has instructed Chinese tech companies to limit their use of Nvidia chips to overseas operations while supporting domestic manufacturing. The two requirements are mutually exclusive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chips cleared for export cannot legally be deployed where Beijing wants to deploy them, and Beijing won\u2019t authorise the domestic use the US licences require, according to\u00a0Implicator.<\/p>\n
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stated at a Senate hearing last month that Chinese firms are trying to keep their investment focused on domestic suppliers, including Huawei. Beijing\u2019s State Council has also ordered a supply-chain security review aimed at cutting dependence on US semiconductors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The policy contradiction is not accidental. That is the point.<\/p>\n
What Huawei gained while diplomats talked<\/p>\n
The days around the summit produced several data points that matter more for the long term than Trump\u2019s parting comment. DeepSeek confirmed its latest model had been optimised to run on Huawei processors. Tencent\u2019s chief strategy officer said Chinese GPU supply would increase progressively through 2026, and an Alibaba executive said its T-Head proprietary GPUs had achieved scaled mass production.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This follows the April\u00a0launch\u00a0of DeepSeek V4, which adapted the model for Huawei\u2019s Ascend chips \u2014 the first major Chinese frontier model to do so in training, not just inference. What the summit week confirmed is that the shift is no longer experimental. It is now a supply-chain policy. Nvidia\u2019s China revenue has fallen to roughly 5% in recent quarters, down from above 20% before export controls tightened. The company\u2019s own guidance for the current quarter assumes zero revenue from China.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Huang\u2019s last-minute inclusion in the delegation\u2013Trump called him directly after seeing media coverage that he had not been invited\u2013suggested urgency. The outcome suggested the limits of what CEO diplomacy can achieve when the obstruction is structural, not procedural.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The read for the AI industry<\/p>\n
The stalemate matters beyond bilateral optics. Chinese AI platforms are now operating under a domestic mandate to build on Huawei\u2019s compute stack. The question of which AI hardware architecture becomes dominant in the world\u2019s second-largest AI market is being answered not by technical benchmarks but by government directive.<\/p>\n
Beijing steering platforms toward Huawei Ascend chips rather than Nvidia H200S is not just a trade posture. It is a structural bet that the performance gap will close fast enough that being locked into the domestic stack is manageable. DeepSeek V4\u2019s results suggest it may be right, at least for inference workloads.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trump said something could happen. Greer said the decision is sovereign for China. Both are true, and neither changes the current position: the H200 deal is approved, licensed, and frozen, with Huawei filling the space it leaves behind.<\/p>\n
(Image source: The White House)<\/p>\n
See Also: Can China\u2019s chip stacking strategy really challenge Nvidia\u2019s AI dominance?<\/p>\n
Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is part of TechEx and co-located with other leading technology events. Click here for more information.<\/p>\n
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President Trump flew to Beijing, brought Jensen Huang along at the last minute, and left two days later, telling reporters that \u201csomething could happen\u201d on chip exports. Nothing did. Not a single Nvidia H200 has shipped to China since Trump\u00a0first authorised\u00a0the sales in December 2025, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told\u00a0Bloomberg\u00a0that semiconductor controls were [\u2026]<\/p>\n
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