China's First Frontier AI Export Controls: MOFCOM Announcement No. 48
On October 16, 2026, China's commerce and science ministries issued Announcement No. 48, proposing to add 40 technologies to the export catalogue, 23 of them in AI, with an interim pre-export registration requirement already in effect. Draft thresholds cover frontier models at 10 to the 26th power FLOPs of training compute, 2 trillion parameters, or a global top-10 ranking, plus agent architectures and AI-enabled offensive cyber capability, while API and SaaS access is not counted as export but local deployment abroad is. It matters because frontier AI supply chains now face formal outbound controls from both of the largest AI-producing jurisdictions, and the draft is open for comment until November 15, 2026.
SOURCES
- Hacker News (AI)2026-11-02 07:27