--- title: "China Weighs Letting ByteDance and Alibaba Import Banned Nvidia Chips, Starting With a Million" description: "The Trump–Xi summit barely touched export controls, but Beijing’s tech regulator is soliciting plans to buy RTX Pro 5500s" author: "Penny Quirke" published: 2026-09-28T21:49:10Z modified: 2026-09-29T01:28:23Z url: https://rews.cc/a/china-weighs-letting-bytedance-and-alibaba-import-banned-nvi-d117c2 language: en tags: ["nvidia", "trump", "china", "ai", "chips", "tech"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # China Weighs Letting ByteDance and Alibaba Import Banned Nvidia Chips, Starting With a Million *The Trump–Xi summit barely touched export controls, but Beijing’s tech regulator is soliciting plans to buy RTX Pro 5500s* By Penny Quirke · September 28, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/china-weighs-letting-bytedance-and-alibaba-import-banned-nvi-d117c2 ## In brief - The Trump–Xi summit produced a two-month truce extension and no export-control talks, with rare earths a looming risk - China’s MIIT asked Alibaba and ByteDance for plans to buy RTX Pro 5500 gaming chips, likely for AI servers - ByteDance would order 1 million chips — two quarters of projected Nvidia sales — with first shipments eyed for December - Author Stephen Witt calls Huang “the president’s most influential adviser on technology issues” - China was under 1 percent of Nvidia’s data center revenue last quarter; unsold H200s cost it $400 million in H1 2026 On paper, the recent summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping changed almost nothing: export controls never came up, an already tenuous trade truce was extended for just two months, and analysts expect looming US controls could end it and trigger Chinese retaliation in the form of cut-off rare earth exports. In the background, though, Nvidia appears to have notched a sizable win. Sources familiar with China’s deliberations told The Information that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China’s tech oversight arm, asked Alibaba and ByteDance to share their plans for buying Nvidia’s RTX Pro 5500 — which is, officially, a gaming chip. Beijing wants the firms to detail how they’d use them, with expectations the chips would be stacked into servers to power the country’s most in-demand AI models. At least one buyer “plans to put eight RTX Pro 5500s in each server, a standard setup that lets the chips work together on larger AI models,” sources said. If Beijing gives the nod, ByteDance plans to order one million chips — enough, on its own, to secure Nvidia two quarters of projected sales — and The Information reports Nvidia is preparing to ship first orders this December. The government intends to let at least some chips in, per those sources; as the outlet notes, “Chinese companies are rolling out AI products and services faster than they can find the chips to run them.” Whether the sales ultimately win approval remains unclear. ## “What the hell is Nvidia?” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has blamed US export controls for shrinking the company’s share of China’s advanced AI chip market from about 95 percent to zero, The Information reported. But those controls were not, initially, Trump’s gift to loosen. He came into office asking “What the hell is Nvidia?”, then tightened Biden-era restrictions further — most notably banning H200 exports to China — and even mused about breaking Nvidia up, figuring more domestic competition was crucial to winning the so-called AI race. Then came dinner with Huang at Mar-a-Lago, after which Trump said he “learned the facts of life” and grasped that Nvidia is an “amazing” AI leader. Ignoring warnings from lawmakers and national security experts, he lifted the H200 controls, which China eventually allowed to some firms. Since then Trump and Huang have appeared together publicly again and again, and talk regularly by phone, according to Stephen Witt, author of *The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, And The World’s Most Coveted Microchip*. Witt told NPR that Trump’s recent claims — that the idea of AI destroying humanity is a “hoax” and that AI will instead be an economic boon — are “exactly Jensen’s talking points.” “Jensen is now the president’s most influential adviser on technology issues,” Witt said. “The two have become quite close.” Interviewing “tons” of industry figures, Witt found the hardware camp — the people who design the chips and networking gear — tends to share Huang’s very low sense of risk, while the software camp, including Nvidia customers like Anthropic and OpenAI, is urging the White House to take the dangers seriously. The debate has run for 10 years, he said, and “neither camp has moved at all.” For whatever an official stamp is worth, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed ahead of the Xi talks that “the president is completely aligned with Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia.” ## The spreadsheets The financial stakes are plain enough. China’s delayed approval of H200 sales left China comprising less than 1 percent of Nvidia’s data center revenue in the most recent quarter. Andrew Yoon, a researcher at the AI safety nonprofit CivAI, told CNBC that in the industry “Nvidia is the most aggressive in terms of, let’s just make money,” adding, “At every turn, they are really trying to just make sure whatever happens is good for Nvidia’s bottom line.” Critics worry that loosened controls could divert too many chips to China, eventually costing US data centers the supply that keeps them ahead on frontier AI. For now, Nvidia’s own reporting suggests the countries don’t compete for supply: in the first half of 2026 it reportedly took a $400 million hit on unsold H200 chips no American firm wants, because US buyers can get Nvidia’s more advanced silicon. Policy experts believe that could change as more US data centers come online. An Nvidia spokesperson told Ars Technica that China lifting curbs on “outdated” gaming chips “released nearly a half a decade ago” will only benefit US firms unfairly burdened by restrictions on chips that can’t train AI. The statement echoes Huang’s promise at a recent All-In summit hosted by Trump’s former AI czar David Sacks: “we’re going to make sure that everybody wins in the AI race of America. Every industry, every company, every state, every people.” Witt, meanwhile, jokes that “Jensen is really the only one who wants to sell his equipment to China.” At the summit’s state dinner, Huang sat alongside Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and Satya Nadella; China invited none of its own tech leaders. Ro Khanna, the top Democrat on the House select committee on China, told The Guardian that Trump could have enlisted those executives to press Xi for technical working groups monitoring AI threats, but Trump seemingly “has no interest in doing that.” Xi acknowledged the two nations’ “responsibility to develop and manage AI for good” and to “ensure that the development of AI is always under human control,” The Guardian reported — yet neither country would make “even a symbolic gesture” that a slowdown might ever be needed. The US-China AI safety alert system announced last week currently includes no tech experts, and Witt’s suggestion of an NTSB-style board reviewing mandatory AI incident reports likely goes nowhere, he says, because “Jensen has convinced Trump that what’s good for Nvidia is good for America.” Which leaves one fact worth setting down: chips built for Beijing and banned from Beijing have been sitting on shelves to the tune of $400 million, and should the rules loosen, no American buyer will rescue that inventory. They have the better chips.