> Even if the Chinese government instigated her funneling GPUs IMO it'd just make he a smuggler and not a sp

It's not even smuggling either; if the destination government is cool with your imported product, you declare your import like every other legal import. Using 3rd party countries to go around export restrictions is a very old entry in the sanctions-busting playbook; I'd bet every single sanctioned country in the history of sanctions has done this in some shape or form if there existed at least one third country that traded with both sanctioner and sanctionee.

Yes, but that's what smuggling is.

But the destination government is not cool with it. CCP have strict limits on Nvidia imports to encourage their domestic GPU industry. There is 10$billion of nvidia GPUs sitting on a dock in Hong Kong rn because they are blocked from import.

10$billion of GPUs are sitting on a dock in Hong Kong because CCP banned their import. China has a strict limit on how many Nvidia GPUs each firm can buy. China don't believe LLMs will lead to AGI/RSI and are betting that it's more valuable to become independent of Nvidia than to win the LLM race.