China proposes export controls on 23 AI technologies, covering frontier model weights by compute, size or top-10 rank; already-open tech exempt
On October 16, 2026, China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and Ministry of Science and Technology issued Announcement No. 48, seeking comment until November 15 on revising the Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited or Restricted from Export with 40 new items, 23 of them in AI. The draft restricts exports of core technologies, including weights, checkpoints and source code, of large models trained with at least 10^26 FLOPs, with at least 2 trillion parameters, or ranked in the global top 10. Technology already public through open source or papers is excluded, and future open-source releases qualify for automatic licensing. Pre-export registration took effect immediately.
MOFCOM and the Ministry of Science and Technology issued Announcement No. 48 of 2026 on October 16, 2026 (MOFCOM’s site lists a 16:00 posting time), proposing a revision of China’s Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited or Restricted from Export and opening it for public comment. The draft adds 40 technologies in three fields: 23 in AI, covering large models, agents, compute clusters and information processing; 5 in biomedicine; and 12 in solar. A MOFCOM spokesperson said 14 of the 40 are proposed for prohibition and 26 for restriction, and that the revision is routine and not aimed at any particular country, region or entity. Comments can be sent from October 16 to November 15 by email to jinxianmulu@mofcom.gov.cn, by fax or by letter.
Under the draft list in Annex 1, the restricted “AI large-model technology” entry has two parts. The first covers large models trained on China’s “important data” that are then offered as services; models using no more than 0.1% important data are excluded if that data cannot materially boost core R&D capability in the field, has been desensitized and cleaned, and is not reproduced in outputs, as are cases where the data is lawfully public. The second covers core large-model technologies, including weights, key checkpoints, underlying source code, architecture design and training-optimization or inference-acceleration techniques, for any model meeting one condition: training compute of at least 10^26 floating-point operations, at least 2 trillion parameters, or “globally leading” capability, defined as a global top-10 ranking at the time of export in public evaluations by major domestic or foreign evaluators or large industry platforms of overall performance, specialized capability, global usage, safety or training efficiency.
The prohibited section includes large models trained on China’s “core data” and offered as services; high-performance agents built specifically or mainly for critical information infrastructure, defense or core government systems; and AI-driven autonomous malware generation and mutation that could be used against such sensitive systems. The restricted section also lists agent technologies (with thresholds such as splitting a natural-language instruction into at least 20 subtasks, at least 60 concurrently collaborating agents, or integrating at least 200 third-party tools), AI-assisted vulnerability discovery, AI chip design, and interconnect (at least 800 GB/s bidirectional), fault-tolerance and scheduling technologies for intelligent compute clusters with more than 10,000 AI accelerators.
For open weights, technology that has already entered the public domain through open source or academic papers is outside the scope. Open-sourcing AI technology, along with exports tied to Chinese firms’ self-built and self-operated data centers abroad, overseas chip tape-outs, joint R&D using foreign resources and participation in international standards, qualifies for automatic licensing and other facilitation, which the spokesperson described as essentially “cleared as soon as filed.” The spokesperson also said most AI technology will remain freely exportable once the rules take effect; on-premise overseas deployment of restricted technology counts as an export, though deployment on a company’s own overseas cloud can use automatic licensing, while offering restricted models via API calls, apps or web interfaces, SaaS or lightweight on-device deployment falls outside large-model export controls. More facilitation is promised for capacity building, technology sharing and rulemaking among members of the World AI Cooperation Organization.
The announcement also sets an interim measure: from its publication until the revised catalogue takes effect, exporters must register on MOFCOM’s technology-trade management platform (ecomp.mofcom.gov.cn) before exporting any listed technology, including exports already under way but not completed. Registration covers transferring technology ownership abroad, licensing domestic technology for foreign use, a change of owner or actual controller to a foreign entity, and other cases MOFCOM specifies; exporters must judge for themselves whether a technology falls in scope.
This is still a consultation draft; final thresholds, facilitation measures and the effective date depend on a later announcement. Neither the notice nor the Q&A says explicitly whether publishing restricted model weights openly worldwide during the interim period requires registration, which remains an open question for labs planning open releases above the thresholds.
Sources
- 商务部 科技部公告2026年第48号 就修订《中国禁止出口限制出口技术目录》公开征求意见并对相关技术出口实施临时登记管理 — 商务部、科技部
- 商务部新闻发言人就修订《中国禁止出口限制出口技术目录》答记者问 — 商务部新闻办公室
- 附件1 拟列入《中国禁止出口限制出口技术目录》的人工智能、生物医药、光伏技术范围（征求意见稿） — 商务部、科技部