What governments do is, generally, much more important than what they say. And what they're doing here is moving in the direction of restriction

Care to substantiate that? Not that I disagree, just curious.

My (not thorougly informed) take is that they are are taking measures to have the capability of restriction but are also adding provisions so that this capability does not add friction to the current practice of enabling export of open weight models.

So to me it's like they are keeping their options open rather than leaning on one versus the other.

No, what they've been doing so far is changing nothing.

What they are saying is that they won't be changing anything.

That could of course change overnight.

There are multiple aspects to this: China is cottoning on to the meaning of soft power, and besides that being a major supplier of AI related models, services and hardware further cements their place in the world economy.

Of course there are risks as well. Models produced and released into the wild for which you have not seen the training and conditioning data could have payloads that you'd rather not have.

The proposed export controls do add some categories where export is completely prohibited. For example, sandbox detection. While the provisions specifically for AI models are generous enough, it's still possible that they trigger some other prohibition by being too capable. The statement about encouraging open source only applies to cases where export is merely restricted, not prohibited, and even then companies need to report their intention to export in advance, in principle giving the government the opportunity to deny them an export license.

So they're changing some things.

Also a lot of countries that can't trust the US -cough Maduro cough- will choose Chinese AI solutions.

“Mind people's actions over words.“ -Zed

“Right now, your government is doing things you think only other governments do.” -Van Halen, Right Now

I think you're contradicting yourself here.

What they will do remains to be seen. The document at hand is what they're saying.

I.e. less important if we follow your own assessment.

Jetson Nano(with Nintendo Switch SoC) used to require a signed form with restrictions like that for US export control compliance even in a democratic country. It's the same device as the one that was always there, except you were only familiar with its operating end being around yourself.

I would find it surprising if the chinese government wanted to allow Anthropic/OpenAI/Google levels of influence on the public opinion and regulatory environment without guardrails. OSS models make AI a replaceable commodity and reduce the potential for market/opinion capture by the frontier labs.

Interesting way to encourage open weights models. It sounds like anyone wanting to export closed AI will have to apply for a licence.

Companies making closed-weight models typically don't export them at all, but sell access to them as a service. (Which doesn't count as an export of the model.) So it's primarily companies releasing open weights (if they pass the thresholds for the restricted category), or that host their models in datacenters outside China that will need to apply for an export license.

> Which doesn't count as an export of the model.

Says who?

Said the Ministry of Commerce at the press conference for the draft export controls: https://www.mofcom.gov.cn/xwfb/xwfyrth/art/2026/art_d7661dbf... 对于企业利用限制类大模型对外提供API调用、APP/网页交互、SaaS应用、本地端侧轻量化部署等情形，不属于大模型技术出口管理范围。

On this topic wrote a small book https://insanai.github.io/aiexportcontrols/

You can also download offline PDF at: https://insanai.github.io/aiexportcontrols/books/en/open-sou...

It also shows using game theory that export control leads to overall failure of both the sides.

Meanwhile the US certainly appears to consider API access to constitute a form of export so misunderstandings are understandable. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that China isn't currently restricting that form of export.

Yes, they support it, inasmuch it gives them an advantage.

Of course I never expected anything different from the Chinese Communist Party.

You trust other countries to behave like this out of the goodness of their hearts or something?

If China’s selfish behavior = more open LLM tools and greater ability to run them at home, I’ll gladly take it over the US frontier labs’ druthers, which is a restricted/closed shop we rent from.

This isn’t some BDSM gathering; there’s no need to keep bringing up "safe words."

Famously, the constitution of the ussr explicitly guaranteed many more freedoms than the us constitution does. So, not much to go on

But China is, famously, much more open when it comes to AI. For this comparison to make sense, China should be the hypocritical one, declaring openness when not really being open.

There’s no need to be so sarcastic about OpenAI.