Today · announcement relayed October 16

China adds large models to export curbs; it's still a draft

In Announcement No. 48, China's commerce and science ministries list large models, AI agents and compute clusters in a draft export-catalog revision, and the notice reportedly leaves out technology already open-sourced

Concept illustration: a large red ring binder lies open with three metal rings at its spine; the left page shows a line drawing of a laptop whose screen holds a speech bubble with grey lines, and the right page shows a tall server rack of stacked units marked with small dots and lines. Above the binder is a black sign lettered MOFCOM in white, and on the right a person with shoulder-length dark hair, dressed in dark clothes with a white card on a lanyard, rests one hand on the edge of the right page.

Why it matters: China puts large models into a draft export-control list, and the notice reportedly leaves open-sourced or published technology out. We make no new call today.

Paul Triolo, an analyst who has long tracked Chinese tech policy, relayed the official notice on October 16 with a link to it (Paul Triolo, 2026-10-16; MOFCOM Announcement No. 48). The announcement, issued by the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Science and Technology, seeks comment on revising China's Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited or Restricted from Export, with a deadline of November 15. The notice says the consultation covers 40 technologies in three fields: artificial intelligence, biomedicine and photovoltaics. Twenty-three of them are in AI, including large models, AI agents and compute clusters.

The announcement adds a second rule that applies now. From the date of the notice, a technology exporter must register on the Ministry of Commerce's business system before exporting any technology listed in the annex. The catalog revision itself is still out for comment. The notice also says technology that has already entered the public domain through open-sourcing or published academic papers falls outside its scope.

A figure circulating on X splits the list into "14 prohibited, 26 restricted" (choblin29, 2026-10-16). Fourteen plus 26 is exactly the 40 items across all three fields. Our reading: that split covers the three fields combined, not AI alone.

Not proven yet: the item-by-item contents of the annex's 23 AI entries haven't been reviewed How we checked →

Judgment update: Matt Sheehan, a Carnegie fellow who studies Chinese AI governance, gave a first read: "Think this is more about gov having veto power over sales/acquisitions/sharing of tech." (Matt Sheehan, 2026-10-16) Sheehan said he hadn't read the notice closely yet. No new judgment from us. Whether registration will cover frontier-model weights depends on the final text and the annex, after comments close on November 15.

Source and checks

This item ran in the brief of Oct 17, 2026, alongside 15 other items. How we checked it, the quote checks and what was still missing that day are on that issue's How we checked page.

Cite this item

SecondSource (2026). "China adds large models to export curbs; it's still a draft." https://secondsource.io/en/news/2026-10-17-2/. Accessed access date.