China drafts export controls on 23 key AI technologies

China's draft update extends export controls beyond hardware to the core technologies behind large models, including weights, checkpoints, source code, architecture, and training or inference methods. The thresholds — 10^26 FLOPs of training compute, at least 2 trillion parameters, or a global top-10 ranking — are determined by public rankings from major domestic and foreign evaluators or industry platforms looking at overall performance, specific tasks, safety, or global usage numbers. A separate case covers models trained on China's "important data" as defined by its Data Security Law, with lawfully public data exempt and a small allowance of up to 0.1 percent if the data was cleaned beforehand, never shows up in AI outputs, and doesn't substantially boost R&D capacity. Certain AI tools for finding software vulnerabilities face new export limits rather than a ban, while AI tools that can write or alter malware on their own to attack critical infrastructure, the military, or government agencies face a total export ban. Dean W. Ball, head of strategic futures at OpenAI, writes that the move does not mean "China is shutting down open-weight models," but it does indicate the Chinese government establishing the optionality to shut down future open-weight models at will, adding that Beijing's framework is a "mirror image" of the model-weight export controls the US government has already put in place. The fast-track process at the same time grants automatic licensing for open-source releases, for Chinese firms running their own data centers abroad, taping out chips overseas, conducting research with foreign partners, or helping set international standards — eligible exports are cleared the moment a company files the paperwork. Beijing also pledges to back AI development in the Global South and ease exports for capacity building, tech sharing, and joint rulemaking within the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization. Until the final rules take effect, companies must register affected exports through the commerce ministry's portal.