Blacklisted Chinese university bought Nvidia H200 chips despite US curbs, records show

Northwestern Polytechnical University, a Chinese university with deep ties to the People's Liberation Army, bought Nvidia's powerful H200 artificial intelligence chips last month despite being on a US export blacklist since 2001, Reuters reported exclusively on Wednesday (November 11), exposing gaps in Washington's efforts to curb China's access to advanced computing.

Four H200s bought in two purchases via domestic suppliers

According to an October 21 procurement record on the university's website, its management school bought two H200 chips for 874,700 yuan (about $123,000) from Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology rather than directly from Nvidia. A separate notice shows its cybersecurity school bought two more H200s on September 4 for 796,000 yuan, bringing the total to four.

The H200 is among Nvidia's most capable chips for training and running advanced AI systems, and exports to China require US licence approval, which is normally denied for institutions on the Entity List.

Rented computing: five contracts this year bypass hardware controls

Beyond buying chips outright, the university also rented access to H200 computing power through Chinese companies. On January 28, its cybersecurity school signed two seven-month contracts for HGX systems containing eight H200 chips each, one for reinforcement-learning fine-tuning (441,000 yuan, February 16 to September 16) and one for multitask fine-tuning (441,700 yuan, February 1 to August 31). Reuters reviewed 26 Chinese procurement and corporate records from this year and found universities and research institutions buying restricted Nvidia chips or renting Nvidia-powered computing through domestic suppliers.

Blacklisted since 2001, tightened in 2019; this year's rule change did not lift the ban

Based in Xian, Northwestern Polytechnical is a member of China's "Seven Sons of National Defense" group and conducts research related to military aircraft, missiles and satellites. The US Commerce Department added it to the Entity List in 2001 over alleged missile-proliferation activities and military research, and tightened the restrictions in 2019, making licences for controlled US technology subject to a policy of denial in most circumstances. A rule change on January 15, 2026 moved exports of H200 and equivalent chips to China and Macau from a presumption of denial to case-by-case review, but it did not remove the university's separate restrictions; the rule also requires safeguards to prevent blacklisted entities and military end-users from remotely accessing exported chips.

Reuters said Northwestern Polytechnical, Nvidia and the US Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security did not respond to requests for comment. The report does not say how the chips reached China, and it does not accuse Nvidia of involvement in the transactions. Sources: Reuters; BusinessWorld; Inside Telecom; Unite.ai.