Beijing, Nov 11, 2026 13:47 IST
A Chinese university with close ties to the People's Liberation Army acquired powerful Nvidia H200 artificial intelligence chips last month despite being subjected to a US export blacklist, according to institutional procurement documents. The finding exposes significant vulnerabilities in Washington's ongoing efforts to restrict China's acquisition of advanced technology.
The revelations arrive as Nvidia and its chief executive, Jensen Huang, face mounting political pressure in Washington over his advocacy for relaxed restrictions on AI chip sales to China. Reports alleging Huang was targeted by a Chinese intelligence operation have further elevated tensions.
Huang has consistently defended continued US sales to China, arguing they help maintain American technological supremacy and ensure that Chinese customers remain dependent on US hardware. Conversely, numerous US lawmakers contend that access to advanced Nvidia chips accelerates China's development of military systems, intelligence analysis tools, and weapon designs.
Lawmakers from both major parties in Congress have pressed for tighter regulatory controls on advanced AI exports, advocating for stricter chip-tracking mandates and increased congressional oversight. Three Republican committee chairmen recently requested a briefing with Huang regarding his reported interactions with a suspected Chinese intelligence operative.
Northwestern Polytechnical University, a member of China's elite defence-focused university consortium known as the Seven Sons of National Defense, purchased two H200 chips for 874,700 yuan, equivalent to approximately $123,000, according to an October 21 procurement notice on its website. The components were acquired for the institution's management school via a domestic technology vendor rather than a direct transaction with Nvidia. The H200 stands among Nvidia's most capable processors for training and executing advanced AI models, remaining strictly subject to US export licensing requirements that typically result in denials for blacklisted entities.
Beyond that direct purchase, procurement records indicate that Northwestern Polytechnical secured access to H200 chips and other high-end Nvidia processors on five separate occasions this year through rented computing capacity agreements with local firms.
Northwestern Polytechnical, Nvidia, and the US Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security declined to comment on the findings. Contact details for the domestic technology supplier could not be determined.
Located in the northwestern city of Xian, Northwestern Polytechnical conducts extensive research connected to military aircraft, missiles, and satellites. The US Commerce Department originally placed the university on its Entity List in 2001 due to alleged involvement in missile proliferation and military research, subsequently tightening those restrictions in 2019 to enforce a general policy of license denials.
The university's acquisitions demonstrate how Chinese organizations with military affiliations continue to bypass trade restrictions to secure US AI computing power domestically, either by purchasing hardware outright or by leasing server access. An analysis of numerous Chinese procurement and corporate records from the year revealed multiple universities and research bodies acquiring restricted Nvidia chips or renting Nvidia-powered computing services through local intermediaries, with several maintaining direct ties to China's defense apparatus.
Although the administration began permitting specific H200 exports to China on a case-by-case basis under policies introduced in January, those rules explicitly maintained separate prohibitions for organizations listed on the Entity List. The updated licensing framework also mandates safeguards to block blacklisted entities and military users from remotely accessing covered processors.
In addition to the outright purchase by the management school, records show the university's cybersecurity institute entered into two seven-month contracts in January for server access involving eight H200 chips each, valued at 441,700 yuan and 441,000 yuan respectively, to support AI model fine-tuning and reinforcement learning. The institution also leased servers housing Nvidia A100 and A800 chips, which remain universally banned for export to Chinese entities.
Further records show additional acquisitions by other university departments, highlighting a broader market for restricted Nvidia technology across Chinese higher education institutions, including purchases of H100 processors by Shenzhen University and the Wuhan University of Technology.