China drafts export curbs on 23 AI technologies

The draft names 40 technologies. AI accounts for 23 of them, with large models and agents both on the list. Twelve concern solar power and five biomedicine, such as cell and gene therapy.

Two levels of control are proposed. Under the draft, the core technology of a large model trained on sensitive national data could not leave China at all. The same goes for agents meant for defence or critical infrastructure. A model would need an export licence once it reaches 2 trillion parameters (the numbers a model learns in training), or if it shows abilities the draft calls world-leading. Moonshot’s Kimi K3 and Alibaba’s Qwen 3.8-Max already pass that size, AP notes.

Models already released stay exempt, and only new open-weight releases (models whose files anyone can download) would need the licence, Wccftech reports. It also notes a move in Taiwan: as part of its US trade deal, Taiwan agreed to make sending advanced chips and servers on to China a criminal offence.

If your product runs on a Chinese open model, a licence step in Beijing now sits between its makers and their next release.