China has proposed sweeping new export controls covering 40 technologies across artificial intelligence, biomedicine and solar manufacturing, in a draft published Friday by the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Under the draft, known as Announcement No. 48, 14 technologies would be banned from export outright and 26 would require a licence. Twenty-three of the entries are AI technologies, including large models, intelligent agents and computing clusters; 12 cover solar technology and five cover biomedicine, from cell and gene therapy to small nucleic acid drugs.
Reporting on the draft says core technology for large AI models trained on sensitive national data could be banned, as could AI agents built for defence and critical infrastructure, with models at or above roughly two trillion parameters facing restrictions. Publicly available and open-source technology is excluded, and using an AI service by API is treated differently from transferring the underlying technology.
Public comment runs until November 15, but a temporary registration requirement already applies to covered transfers, including ownership transfers, overseas licensing and deals already under way. The proposal puts AI model weights and source code formally into China's export-control catalogue for the first time.
