【Wen / Observer Net, Baishantou】

On December 8, U.S. President Trump announced that he would allow NVIDIA to export H200 AI chips to China. The event itself is not surprising, but its background significance is extremely complex.

Notably, just before this, NVIDIA's CEO Huang Renxun was still optimistic about the approval of H20 chip exports. He had previously judged that H20, as a "diminished" product for the Chinese market, would trigger concentrated procurement due to supply shortages.

However, reality quickly proved him wrong. Several domestic companies have clearly stated they will not purchase H20. Regulatory authorities had previously advised against using the product in critical information infrastructure, significantly reducing its necessity in the mainstream market. At the same time, the performance reduction of H20 is too severe to handle intensive AI workloads, and the domestic AI accelerator industry has accelerated its iteration over the past year, making alternative solutions quite mature. In this context, H20 has almost no practical appeal in the Chinese market.

Therefore, when Huang Renxun lobbied the Trump administration, he had to change his tone, emphasizing that the Chinese market would not accept products with reduced performance, only the most advanced chips. From this perspective, the licensing of H200 is not merely a unilateral favor from the United States, but rather a natural result after the U.S. adjusted its policy in the context of rapid domestic technological advancement.

A more important background is that Chinese local AI chip companies are rapidly rising. In the past year, Huawei's Ascend system has been implemented in multiple industries, Cambricon's inference product line continues to expand, and companies such as Biren and Moeruotian have received positive evaluations from the capital market. Multiple companies have listed on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board and Hong Kong stocks, reflecting long-term confidence from investors in the construction of domestic computing power systems. The procurement structure of data centers and large enterprise users has also seen significant changes, with the proportion of domestic products being explicitly written into indicators in many projects. These trends are weakening NVIDIA's dominant position in the Chinese market.

H200

For NVIDIA, the long-term absence from the Chinese market brings structural risks. Once the domestic GPU forms sufficient competitiveness in terms of ecosystem, performance, and supply chain scale, it will be difficult for NVIDIA to re-enter this market, and a new global-level GPU vendor may emerge from Chinese enterprises. This prospect makes NVIDIA must try to avoid completely disconnecting from the Chinese market, which is the fundamental reason for its continuous pressure on the U.S. government to seek relaxation of export restrictions.

H200 is NVIDIA's current most advanced mainstream chip, with performance and ecosystem that are globally competitive. Therefore, there is still some demand for it among certain domestic AI enterprises. Especially at this stage, when domestic production capacity has not yet fully covered all scenarios and the software ecosystem is still being improved, H200 has certain practical application value in the short term.

However, from a long-term strategic perspective, relying on imported high-end chips is not feasible. The uncertainty of U.S. policy toward China is an unavoidable structural risk. Over the past few years, the U.S. export policy on advanced AI chips has frequently changed, and it is significantly influenced by the domestic political cycle. From H100, A100 to H20, and then to the latest Blackwell, Robin series, each generation of products must undergo re-examination for export. The instability of the policy means that any long-term planning for key industries cannot be based on external supply chains.

Therefore, large-scale procurement of H200 in key industries is not sustainable. Whether from the perspective of national security, supply chain independence, or technology route planning, large technology companies and institutions involved in infrastructure sectors such as telecommunications, energy, finance, and transportation cannot rely on U.S. chips for core computing power in the long term. Even if purchased in the short term, it can only be limited to a small number of areas where domestic products have not yet covered, while strictly controlling the scope.

This self-restraint is not a restriction on development, but a necessary condition to ensure the continuous growth of the domestic computing power system. If the demand for domestic solutions is weakened because of the convenience of imported chips in the short term, it will directly affect the technical investment direction and industrial competitiveness of local companies, eventually leading to new path dependence. For China's computing power industry to achieve real breakthroughs, it must adhere to the strategic principle of independent control in key areas, ensuring the ability to cope independently when international conditions change.

From this perspective, the U.S. release of H200 is essentially a response to the rapid growth of China's computing power ecosystem. If the domestic chip industry does not have sufficient momentum, the U.S. has no reason to change the export restrictions in the short term. When the ban actually accelerates domestic substitution, easing becomes a choice made by the U.S. government after weighing costs. This fact itself shows that the rapid progress of domestic enterprises is substantially changing the structural conditions of external technological blockades.

In summary, the opening of H200 has a certain alleviating effect on short-term industrial operations, but it will not change the long-term trend of China's computing power system's independent development. Key technological breakthroughs can only be achieved through self-accumulation, not relying on external supply. The future competition pattern will not be determined by a single export license, but by whether the domestic industry chain has the ability to continuously iterate. Whether NVIDIA can enter the Chinese market gradually becomes less decisive, and what is truly critical is whether China can form an independent and stable high-end chip system in this round of technological cycles.

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Original: toutiao.com/article/7582477670756237865/

Statement: This article represents the personal views of the author.