Northwestern Polytechnical University, a Chinese institution on a U.S. export blacklist, bought two Nvidia H200 chips through a domestic supplier, Reuters reported. The purchase tests how far U.S. restrictions reach once chips are resold inside China. Congress is weighing additional safeguards.
Northwestern Polytechnical University, a Chinese institution with ties to the People's Liberation Army, bought two Nvidia H200 AI chips through a domestic supplier in October despite being on a U.S. export blacklist, Reuters reported on Nov. 11, citing procurement records.
An Oct. 21 record on the university's website showed a purchase costing 874,700 yuan, about $123,000, for its management school, Reuters said. The supplier was Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology, not Nvidia. Northwestern Polytechnical, Nvidia and the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.
Why a January licensing change did not cover the buyer
The U.S. began allowing some H200 exports to China under case-by-case licensing in January. That opening did not remove the university's separate blacklist restrictions.
The H200 licensing rule effective Jan. 15, 2026 required applicants to certify that transactions did not involve parties subject to Entity List restrictions. According to The Defiant, a Commerce Department rule records the university's addition to the Entity List on May 14, 2001. Those controls cover exports, reexports and transfers within a country, not just direct sales from a U.S. manufacturer.
Rented H200 access and open questions
Buying hardware was not the university's only reported route to computing power. Reuters also identified five contracts this year for rented access to H200s and other Nvidia processors. Two January contracts each specified seven months of access to servers containing eight H200s.
However, the procurement records offered scant information about the processors' origins or where the rented servers operated, Reuters said. They do not establish how the two purchased H200s entered China.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported on Nov. 9 that the Chip Security Act and the AI Overwatch Act were candidates for inclusion in annual defense legislation. The House Foreign Affairs Committee had advanced both measures, and inclusion in the defense bill remained a possibility, not enacted law.
Source: The Defiant
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