China proposes adding 40 technologies to export control list

China's commerce ministry announced on Friday 16 October a proposal to add 40 technologies from artificial intelligence, biomedicine and photovoltaics to its catalogue of technologies prohibited or restricted from export, Reuters reported from Beijing.

The ministry said applications of related technologies in sensitive fields are "constantly expanding." It described the move as routine and said it "does not target any specific country, region or entity."

The AI items include AI models, intelligent agents and computing clusters. Reuters described them as "three fundamental building blocks of China's AI industry."

Public comment on the revision is open until 15 November. China is also putting interim pre-export registration management in place for the relevant technologies, according to the report.

Reuters tied the move to rising competition and geopolitical tension with the United States over frontier AI. The ministry did not frame it that way.

In July, the Financial Times reported that Beijing was weighing limits on foreign access to its top models, on overseas downloads of model weights and on training-data transfers. It is not confirmed that the current draft includes those items.

Some secondary outlets, citing Global Times, reported a split of 14 prohibited items and 26 requiring licences, and a breakdown of 23 AI, 12 solar and 5 biomedicine technologies. These figures could not be checked against a primary source. Details of the draft may change after the comment period closes on 15 November, when public comment ends. Further announcements from the ministry have not been detailed.

Reuters carried the original report.