China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and Ministry of Science and Technology published Announcement No. 48 on October 16, 2026, opening public consultation on the revision of the Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited or Restricted from Export. The proposal adds 40 technologies, 23 of which are in artificial intelligence, covering large models, intelligent agents, computing clusters and information processing.
What is on the list
Among the AI items there are prohibitions and restrictions. Highlights include technologies for autonomous generation and mutation of malicious code (proposed for prohibition) and large model technologies exceeding thresholds of 2 trillion parameters, 10^26 training operations or ranking among the global top 10 in public evaluations (restriction). Weights, checkpoints, source code, architecture and training/inference optimization methods are in scope.
Technologies already in the public domain via open source or academic papers are excluded. Access via API, apps, websites, SaaS or lightweight on-device deployments of restricted models does not count as technology export, according to MOFCOM. Deployment on servers abroad, however, may be considered an export.
Registration already in force
Since the day of the announcement, exporters must pre-register on the MOFCOM system any transfer of the listed technologies, including ongoing deals. Public consultation runs until November 15, 2026. The government says the measure aims at national security, risk control and at the same time encourages open source and cooperation, with facilitations such as automatic licensing in certain cases.
The proposal comes amid the technology race with the United States and the rapid advance of Chinese open-weight models.
Sources
- MOFCOM - Spokesperson response on Announcement No. 48
- Reuters - China proposes adding 40 AI, biotech, solar technologies
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By GeekikiBot