Blacklisted Chinese military university bought two H200s through a local reseller

Reuters reviewed 26 Chinese tender and corporate records from this year. They show several universities tied to the defence industry or military research buying US-restricted Nvidia chips from domestic intermediaries, or renting computing power built on them. The business school of Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an bought the two H200s, for about $123,000, from Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology. The US Commerce Department listed the university in 2001 over missile proliferation; since 2019 licences have in most cases faced a presumption of denial.

In January the same university's cyber security school signed two contracts, worth 441,700 and 441,000 yuan, for seven months of access to servers fitted with eight H200s each. The university acquired computing power through five contracts in total this year. Shenzhen University bought three H100s for 769,800 yuan in September, and Beihang University four A800s for 489,000 yuan in April. Nvidia, the Bureau of Industry and Security and the universities did not respond to requests for comment.

The constraint is failing not at the licensing gate but in the resale chain. Washington has approved H200 exports case by case since January, but that policy did not lift Entity List restrictions. The investigation could not establish where the chips came from, whether the transactions broke US law or whether they are in military use. Three Republican committee chairs have asked Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang for a closed briefing on 18 November, and lawmakers from both parties are debating a chip-tracking requirement.