China banned Nvidia's RTX 5090D V2 gaming chip while CEO Jensen Huang was visiting, escalating the AI chip trade war as Beijing promotes domestic chipmakers.
<p>Beijing banned an Nvidia gaming chip while the company’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, was visiting China with Donald Trump last week, the latest salvo in the superpowers’ battle to dominate AI.</p>
<p>The chip was added to a list of banned goods at China’s customs checkpoints last Friday, according to a copy of the document seen by the FT and two people with knowledge of the matter.</p>
<p>The move highlights Beijing’s determination to keep out Nvidia’s chips, especially the degraded versions made to comply with US export controls. The Chinese government wants to support domestic chipmakers such as Huawei and Cambricon as they catch up to their US rivals.</p><p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/china-banned-rtx-5090d-v2-while-nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-was-visiting/">Read full article</a></p>
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# China banned RTX 5090D V2 while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was visiting
Source: [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/china-banned-rtx-5090d-v2-while-nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-was-visiting/](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/china-banned-rtx-5090d-v2-while-nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-was-visiting/)
Beijing banned an Nvidia gaming chip while the company’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, was visiting China with Donald Trump last week, the latest salvo in the superpowers’ battle to dominate AI\.
The chip was added to a list of banned goods at China’s customs checkpoints last Friday, according to a copy of the document seen by the FT and two people with knowledge of the matter\.
The move highlights Beijing’s determination to keep out Nvidia’s chips, especially the degraded versions made to comply with US export controls\. The Chinese government wants to support domestic chipmakers such as Huawei and Cambricon as they catch up to their US rivals\.
The Nvidia chip, known as the RTX 5090D V2, was introduced last August to comply with US export controls\. It was aimed at Chinese gamers and 3D animators, but it has also been bought by AI developers, cut off from the most sophisticated Nvidia products\.
Nvidia’s Huang said on Monday that he believed China’s market would become accessible to US chip suppliers\. “My sense is that over time, the market will open,” he told Bloomberg TV\.
Sales of other Nvidia chips including the H200 and the H20, another China\-specific product that Nvidia sold earlier in the market, have been blocked by Beijing even though the Trump administration has approved sales to Chinese tech groups such as Alibaba and Tencent\.
Jensen Huang argues that U.S. export controls on Nvidia chips do not block China from advancing in AI, as sanctions are spurring domestic innovation exemplified by Huawei's chip breakthroughs. The analysis warns that treating chip policy as a simple valve may backfire, creating a world where American technology is absent from influential systems.
Jensen Huang responds to a question about selling chips to Huawei, explaining that export controls on Nvidia chips won't stop China's AI progress due to Huawei's rise.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang highlights the critical role of Chinese researchers in global AI and argues that US decoupling from China is flawed, citing deep interdependence.
The US has approved Nvidia H200 AI chip sales to major Chinese firms including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and JD.com amid ongoing US-China trade tensions, though deliveries remain uncertain as Beijing pushes for domestic chip development.