Export controls blocking China sales

Nvidia still has not sold any H200 artificial intelligence chips to Chinese companies, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told senators on April 22. (usnews.com) Lutnick said “zero” H200 chips had been sold to China “as of today” during Senate testimony in Washington on Wednesday, April 22, 2026. He said Chinese companies have not completed purchases in part because Beijing is steering investment toward domestic chip suppliers. (scmp.com; usnews.com) The Trump administration had formally opened a path in January for China-bound H200 sales under conditions, but shipments have remained stalled by disputes over sale terms and approvals in both the United States and China, according to Reuters. (usnews.com) The H200 is one of Nvidia’s high-end chips for training and running artificial intelligence systems in data centers, though Nvidia’s newer Blackwell chips remain barred from China. That leaves the H200 as a test case for whether Washington can allow some advanced chip sales without reopening the market fully. (thehindu.com; sec.gov) For Nvidia, the gap is not about demand disappearing. Chinese firms had been expected to buy H200s after the January policy shift, and South China Morning Post reported in late January that Beijing had begun approving imports for companies including ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent. (scmp.com) What has changed is the conversion of that interest into booked sales. A market can be open on paper, licenses can exist, and customers can still end up with no delivered chips and no recognized revenue. (usnews.com; scmp.com) That distinction has become more important as Nvidia has said export controls have already shut it out of China’s data-center computing market. In its annual report filed in January 2026, Nvidia said the Chinese government had encouraged customers to buy from China-based competitors and discouraged use of Nvidia data-center products. (sec.gov; stocklight.com) Jensen Huang has described that collapse in starker terms, saying in October 2025 that Nvidia’s share of China’s advanced artificial intelligence accelerator market had fallen from 95% to 0%. He also said Nvidia’s forecasts assumed no China revenue. (scmp.com; moneycontrol.com) Lawmakers pressed Lutnick on whether allowing H200 sales could still aid China’s military, and he answered that the administration was trying to strike what he called a “delicate balance” in relations with Beijing. The immediate number, though, was unchanged on April 22: zero chips sold. (scmp.com; usnews.com)