A Blacklisted Chinese Defence University Bought Nvidia H200s Through a Local Supplier, Reuters Finds in Procurement Records
Northwestern Polytechnical University, a Chinese defence-linked university on the US Entity List since 2001, bought two Nvidia H200 chips in October for 874,700 yuan from a domestic supplier, according to procurement records reported by Reuters on November 11. Its cybersecurity school also rented access to servers with H200 chips this year. A Reuters review of 26 records found other Chinese universities buying or renting restricted Nvidia chips through local suppliers. Nvidia, the university and the US Commerce Department did not respond to Reuters.
The licence system for Nvidia's H200 in China is built around approving named buyers. Reuters' latest finding shows a blacklisted university that bought the chips from a domestic reseller, and rented more through cloud contracts. The records do not show how the chips reached China, or whether that path involved a US licence.
What the records show#
Northwestern Polytechnical University, one of China's "Seven Sons of National Defence" universities, bought two H200 chips in October for 874,700 yuan (about $123,000), according to an October 21 procurement record on its website reported by Reuters on November 11. The chips were bought for its management school from Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology, not from Nvidia.
The university, based in Xi'an, does research on military aircraft, missiles and satellites. The US Commerce Department added it to the Entity List in 2001 and tightened the restriction in 2019 to a policy of denying licences in most cases, Reuters reports.
It also rented capacity. Its cybersecurity school awarded two seven-month contracts in January for access to servers with eight H200 chips each, worth 441,700 yuan and 441,000 yuan, for fine-tuning and reinforcement-learning training, and it rented servers with A100 and A800 chips, according to the records.
A wider pattern#
A Reuters review of 26 Chinese procurement and corporate records from this year found universities and research institutes buying US-restricted Nvidia chips or renting Nvidia-powered computing through domestic suppliers, several with defence links. The records give little information on where the processors came from or where rented servers ran.
The US began allowing some H200 exports to China case by case in January, but that did not lift restrictions on Entity List organisations, Reuters notes. It follows The New York Times' finding that licensed Chinese buyers included firms with empty offices and Reuters' report of about 600,000 H200s held in Hong Kong awaiting Beijing's approval.
Limits#
- The findings rest on procurement records as reported by Reuters; we read Reuters' report via The Straits Times and Al Jazeera, not the records themselves.
- The records do not show how the chips reached China or whether any export rule was broken by a specific party.
- Northwestern Polytechnical, Nvidia and the US Bureau of Industry and Security did not respond to Reuters, and Reuters could not reach the supplier.