China drafts export curbs on 40 AI, solar and biotech technologies
What's happening? On 16 October 2026, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and Ministry of Science and Technology published a draft revision of the Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited and Restricted from Export, proposing to add 40 technologies across artificial intelligence, photovoltaics and biomedicine. Public comments are open through 15 November 2026. An interim pre-export registration requirement for the listed technologies took effect the same day and also covers unfinished deals.
Verified from the draft and official coverage: The package splits into 14 prohibited items and 26 restricted items. AI accounts for 23 entries, including large models, agents, computing clusters and related information-processing technologies; restricted design technologies for advanced AI chips (including 2.5D/3D packaging) and certain memory designs are also named. Secondary reporting says restricted model weights and source code would apply above performance thresholds, including models trained on "important data" with at least about 2 trillion parameters or ranking among the world's top 10 on selected measures. Technologies already in the public domain via open source or published papers are excluded. Solar adds 12 items (polysilicon, wafer and cell manufacturing, with perovskite on the prohibited list and heterojunction restricted). Biomedicine adds five items spanning cell and gene therapy, small nucleic-acid drugs and pathogen-related technology; outbound licences that do not transfer ownership may get facilitation such as automatic licensing.
Context: Beijing frames the rewrite as aligning with practices other major economies already use, after years in which Chinese firms scaled frontier open-weight models and advanced solar manufacturing. For overseas licensing, joint ventures and IP transfers involving Chinese AI, PV or biotech know-how, the draft would raise the bar from informal outbound deals to registered, and often licensed, technology exports.
Why it matters: Export controls are usually discussed as US/allied tools aimed at China. This draft is China writing reciprocal rules for its own AI weights, chip designs and industrial process know-how — a sticky governance signal for anyone partnering with Chinese labs or buying Chinese PV/biotech IP. Treat performance thresholds and the final prohibited/restricted split as provisional until the catalogue is formally revised.
Sources: MOFCOM / MOST announcement No. 48 (2026) (16 Oct 2026); Global Times; Bloomberg via The Straits Times; WSJ.
