PLA-Linked Chinese University Bought Nvidia H200 Chips Despite US Blacklist

A Chinese university with deep ties to the People's Liberation Army bought Nvidia's powerful H200 AI chips last month despite being on a US export blacklist, procurement records show, highlighting gaps in Washington's efforts to curb China's access to advanced technology.

Northwestern Polytechnical University, a member of China's "Seven Sons of National Defense" group of elite defence-focused universities, bought two H200 chips last month for 874,700 yuan ($123,000), according to an October 21 procurement record on its website. The chips were purchased for its management school from Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology rather than directly from Nvidia.

The H200 is among Nvidia's most capable chips for training and running advanced AI systems and is subject to US export licence approvals, which are normally denied for blacklisted institutions such as Northwestern Polytechnical.

Based in the northwestern city of Xian, the university conducts research related to military aircraft, missiles and satellites. The US Commerce Department added it to its trade blacklist, known as the Entity List, in 2001 over its alleged involvement in missile-proliferation activities and military research, and tightened the restrictions in 2019, making licences for exports of controlled US technology subject to a policy of denial in most circumstances.

The university also bought access this year to H200 chips and other powerful Nvidia AI processors through five contracts for rented computing capacity from Chinese companies. Its cybersecurity school awarded two seven-month contracts in January for access to servers containing eight H200 chips each — worth 441,700 yuan and 441,000 yuan — covering fine-tuning AI models and reinforcement-learning training. It also rented access to servers containing eight Nvidia A100 chips and eight A800 chips, which are banned from export to all Chinese entities.

The Trump administration began allowing some H200 exports to China on a case-by-case basis in January, but that policy did not lift the separate restrictions applying to Entity List organisations such as Northwestern Polytechnical. The January licensing rules also require safeguards to prevent blacklisted entities and military end-users from remotely accessing chips exported under the policy.

A Reuters review of 26 Chinese procurement and corporate records from this year found universities and research institutions buying US-restricted Nvidia chips or renting access to Nvidia-powered computing services through domestic suppliers. Shenzhen University bought three H100 processors, another high-end Nvidia AI chip banned by the US, for 769,800 yuan in September. Wuhan University of Technology bought a server containing an H100 chip for 355,000 yuan in June and four A100 chips in a separate 344,000 yuan purchase. Beihang University, another of the Seven Sons of National Defense, bought four A800 processors for 489,000 yuan in April.

The findings come as Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang face mounting scrutiny in Washington over his lobbying for looser restrictions on sales of AI chips to China, following reports alleging he was targeted by a Chinese spying operation. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have urged stronger controls on China's access to advanced AI chips, such as chip-tracking requirements and greater congressional oversight, and three Republican congressional committee chairmen have requested a briefing with Huang on November 18. Huang has argued that continued US sales to China would preserve American technological leadership and keep Chinese customers reliant on US technology. But some US lawmakers say access to Nvidia's most powerful AI chips can speed China's development of AI systems for weapons design, intelligence analysis and military modernisation.

Northwestern Polytechnical, Nvidia and the US Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, which oversees export controls, did not respond to requests for comment. Reuters has previously reported that Chinese institutions acquired restricted Nvidia chips embedded in servers made by Super Micro, Dell and Gigabyte through domestic resellers, and that small quantities of H200 chips had reached China through indirect routes while Beijing withheld approval for large-scale imports.