US President Donald Trump’s historic visit to China comes at a time when the US-Iran war is disrupting global energy supplies, increasing economic uncertainty and adding new tension to relations between Washington and Beijing. In this story, part of a series examining how competition, interdependence, and geopolitical crises are reshaping the relationship between the two powers, we examine how artificial intelligence (AI), chip controls, and competing technology ecosystems are redefining the rivalry between the United States and China.
Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, was undisputed Center of attention At a banquet attended by a thousand guests in the heart of Beijing in July last year, it was attended by Chinese government officials, diplomats, businessmen and industrial leaders.
Barely managing to eat a few bites of his dinner, he managed to give a marathon of media interviews and accept a host of selfie requests from guests. The rock star treatment even extended to the hotel lobby when he left, where Huang patiently signed autographs for star admirers.
The excitement was palpable and perhaps understandable: Huang arrived in Beijing bearing news that Nvidia’s H20 chip had just been approved. Export to Chinese market. A watered-down version of Nvidia’s cutting-edge AI chips, the H20 still outperforms many Chinese rivals, and with the tech giants in the world’s second-largest economy locked into Nvidia’s ecosystem, Washington appears to have secured the company’s long-term dominance.
But after Huang returned home, the momentum quickly changed. Beijing The investigation began In H20 due to security concerns, resulting in a de facto import ban, the door was kept closed months later when Washington Permitted exports From the more advanced H200, it’s one of the company’s most powerful accelerators for advanced AI models — though it’s still not the most powerful.
These developments highlight the rapid rise of China’s AI industry and its decreasing reliance on Nvidia technology, even as chips remain at the heart of the US-China rivalry.
