Military-linked Chinese university bought Nvidia H200 chips despite U.S. blacklist

A Chinese university with deep ties to the People’s Liberation Army bought Nvidia’s H200 AI chips despite being on a U.S. export blacklist, procurement records show.

Northwestern Polytechnical purchase

Northwestern Polytechnical University bought two H200 chips for 874,700 yuan (US$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 record shows.

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

Northwestern is a member of the “Seven Sons of National Defense” group of Chinese universities under U.S. sanctions and with a history of conducting defence-related research for Beijing.

Other contracts and wider market

Northwestern Polytechnical also bought access this year to H200 chips and other powerful Nvidia AI processors through five contracts for rented computing capacity from Chinese companies, procurement records show.

The university’s cybersecurity school awarded two seven-month contracts in January for access to servers containing eight H200 chips each. The contracts, worth 441,700 yuan and 441,000 yuan, covered fine-tuning AI models and reinforcement-learning training. It also rented access to servers containing eight Nvidia A100 chips and eight A800 chips.

A Reuters review of 26 Chinese procurement and corporate records from this year found universities and research institutions buying U.S.-restricted Nvidia chips or renting access to Nvidia-powered computing services that use such chips through domestic suppliers. Several had close links to China’s defence industry or military research.

Other purchases in the records include Shenzhen University buying three H100 processors for 769,800 yuan in September, and Wuhan University of Technology buying 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 universities, bought four A800 processors for 489,000 yuan in April.

U.S. restrictions and response

The U.S. Commerce Department added Northwestern Polytechnical to its trade blacklist, known as the Entity List, in 2001 over its alleged involvement in missile-proliferation activities and military research. It tightened the restrictions in 2019, making licenses for exports of controlled U.S. technology to the university subject to a policy of denial in most circumstances.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s 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 organizations such as Northwestern Polytechnical.

Northwestern Polytechnical, Nvidia and the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which oversees export controls, did not respond to requests for comment. Reuters could not determine contact details for Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology.

Why it matters

The purchases show how Chinese institutions with military ties continue to obtain U.S. AI computing power through domestic suppliers, either by buying chips outright or renting access to servers containing them, highlighting gaps in Washington’s efforts to curb China’s access to advanced technology.

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Sources

• ctvnews.ca: Nvidia news: Chinese university bought chips despite U.S. blacklist
• bnnbloomberg.ca: Nvidia news: Chinese university bought chips despite U.S. blacklist

This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.