China has begun to assemble a list of government-approved AI hardware suppliers that is designed to encourage public sector organizations to prioritize locally developed artificial intelligence processors, reports the Financial Times. At present, the list only includes Cambricon and Huawei, but does not list any foreign companies, such as AMD or Nvidia, perhaps highlighting China's government attitude towards President Trump's plans to let Nvidia sell its H200 processors to customers in China.
The new list, which will be distributed to ministries, state-owned companies, and public institutions, expands the Information Technology Innovation List (Xinchuang) to include domestic AI processors alongside previously added categories such as local x86-replacement CPUs and homegrown operating systems that replace Microsoft Windows. This list effectively outlines which hardware and software platforms government bodies may purchase, which, to a large degree, defines where billions of dollars per annum are spent by Chinese government-controlled entities.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology did not comment on the updated procurement rules, FT reports, but the policy direction seems clear: China intends to accelerate displacement of U.S.-designed AI accelerators with homegrown alternatives within the state sector.
For China, developing its AI prowess and semiconductor self-sufficiency at the same time creates a dilemma. On the one hand, Nvidia's hardware offers higher performance and a better software stack, which greatly helps Chinese companies train larger AI models. Furthermore, many public-sector workloads remain tightly integrated with Nvidia's CUDA ecosystem, which complicates migration to alternative architectures, such as those designed by Cambricon or Huawei. On the other hand, using domestic hardware and software for building homegrown AI ecosystem enables Chinese companies to set up their own AI standards and eventually develop more competitive AI accelerators.
Commercial companies such as Alibaba and Tencent use Nvidia's hardware to maintain their competitiveness — for them, building their AI ecosystem is more important than China's semiconductor self-sufficiency. While the Chinese government may ban American AI accelerators (like it did with Nvidia's H20), these companies can still use them in the cloud, avoiding U.S. sanctions and sustaining their dependance on American technology.
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