US Commerce Clears Nvidia H200 Sales to 10 Chinese Firms — But China Hesitant to Buy, Steering Demand to Huawei Ascend Domestically

The US Commerce Department approved roughly 10 Chinese companies — including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and JD.com — to purchase up to approximately 75,000 Nvidia H200 AI chips each, CNBC reported on May 14. However, as of the summit opening, no shipments have been made and no commercial orders have been placed, despite the January 2026 conditional approval for H200 exports. Beijing has been actively directing Chinese tech companies to prioritize locally-made Huawei Ascend chips rather than purchasing Nvidia hardware, even when licenses are available. China's hesitancy reflects a deliberate industrial policy calculation: importing Nvidia GPUs in bulk would undermine Beijing's domestic AI chip narrative, validate the success of US export controls, and undercut the commercial case for Huawei's Ascend ecosystem — which ByteDance ($5.6B order, April 2026) and others have committed to at scale. CNBC noted that Chinese tech stocks rallied sharply on the H200 clearance news, interpreting it as a positive signal regardless of actual purchasing intent. The paradox of the announcement is that the US is now offering chip access that China is refusing to take — the inverse of the dynamic in 2022–2024 when China sought US chips and Washington refused. Commerce Secretary Lutnick confirmed at the Senate Appropriations Committee (April 23) that zero H200 chips have been sold to China. Jensen Huang's presence at the summit signals Nvidia's urgent desire to convert the license into actual sales before China's domestic Huawei Ascend ecosystem fully matures. China's SAMR simultaneously suspended antitrust probes into Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Intel — suggesting Beijing is using its regulatory leverage rather than market purchasing as the primary tool in chip diplomacy.