Nvidia H200 chips begin reaching China in limited volumes

The arrival of Nvidia's H200 chips in China marks a significant moment in the intersection of U.S. export controls and Beijing's industrial policy. While the U.S. has authorized substantial purchases—up to 100,000 chips per company—China's regulators are constraining their domestic deployment to shield local chipmakers from foreign competition. The shipments to ByteDance and Tencent, though modest at 10,000 units each, signal that both sides have found a practical accommodation: the U.S. permits sales, but Beijing steers the hardware offshore to Hong Kong, a jurisdiction outside mainland China's customs border. This arrangement allows Chinese tech giants to access advanced AI infrastructure while nominally protecting the domestic semiconductor ecosystem, though the long-term sustainability of such workarounds remains unclear as geopolitical restrictions continue to tighten.