China's Announcement No. 48 adds 23 AI technologies to its export catalogue draft; DeepSeek, MiniMax reported registered

China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and Ministry of Science and Technology published Announcement No. 48 of 2026 on 16 October, a draft that would add 40 technologies to the country's catalogue of technologies banned or restricted from export, 23 of them in artificial intelligence. The draft is open for comment until 15 November, but a temporary registration duty for exporters of the listed technologies has applied since the day it was published. On 26 October The Register reported that state media says DeepSeek and MiniMax have been authorised to keep exporting, which is the part of the story most often described loosely, so this article separates what the ministries wrote from what has only been reported.

Key points

• Announcement No. 48 (16 October 2026) proposes adding 40 technologies to the Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited and Restricted from Export: 23 in AI, 12 in photovoltaics and 5 in biomedicine.
• It is a draft: public comments run from 16 October to 15 November 2026, and the revised catalogue has no stated start date.
• From 16 October until the revised catalogue takes effect, exporters of the listed technologies must register on MOFCOM's online platform before exporting.
• The ministry says API access, apps, websites, SaaS and lightweight on-device versions are not technology exports, and technology already public through open source or papers is outside the scope.
• State-media reports, relayed by The Register, say DeepSeek and MiniMax completed the registration; the ministry has not published a list of registered companies.

What happened

The announcement is signed by both ministries and cites the Foreign Trade Law and the regulations on technology import and export. It covers three fields and 40 technologies in total. The AI group has 23 items spanning large models, intelligent agents, computing clusters and information processing. The text says technology that has already entered the public domain through open source or academic publication is not covered. The detailed technical scope sits in an annex (a .wps file) that we could not read, so the thresholds that decide whether a particular model is caught are not something we can verify.

A MOFCOM spokesperson's question-and-answer note, published the same day, gives more detail. Of the 40 technologies, 14 are proposed for a ban and 26 for restriction, meaning an export licence would be needed. Examples the spokesperson names include AI-driven malicious code generation and mutation (proposed ban) and AI-assisted vulnerability discovery (proposed restriction). The spokesperson says the revision is routine, follows earlier revisions, and is not aimed at any specific country, region or entity.

AI23

Photovoltaics12

Biomedicine5

Technologies proposed for the export catalogue, by field (technologies)

	technologies
AI	23
Photovoltaics	12
Biomedicine	5

Source: MOFCOM/MOST Announcement No. 48 of 2026

The Associated Press reported that exports of AI models with 2 trillion parameters or more, or with certain world-leading capabilities, could be restricted. It noted that Moonshot's Kimi K3 and Alibaba's Qwen 3.8-Max are among Chinese models above that parameter count, but that the proposal does not name specific models. The two-trillion figure is the AP's reading; the announcement text we read does not state it, and a secondary outlet's report of further compute and leaderboard thresholds is something we have not been able to confirm against the annex.

Background

The catalogue is the list Beijing uses to decide which domestic technologies may not be transferred or licensed abroad, or only with permission. The ministry's spokesperson says it has been revised several times since 2001, which is why the ministry presents this update as normal housekeeping. What is different this time is the subject: large models, agents and compute clusters were not previously listed, and the move arrives while the United States and China both restrict technology flows. The US has limited the export of advanced AI chips to China for years, and the AP noted that the US Commerce Department had asked Anthropic in June to bar foreign nationals from using some of its most capable models, a restriction later lifted. Omdia analyst Lian Jye Su told the AP the Chinese move can be seen as a response to Western sovereignty requirements on AI and other key technologies.

Our readers who follow open-weight models will recognise the stakes. Chinese labs release many of the large open-weight models, so comparisons such as Kimi K3.1 Pro's launch and how LLM API prices fell since June include them.

How the rule would work

The key question the ministry answers is where the line between "export" and "service" falls. According to the spokesperson, what matters is whether a restricted technology moves from inside China to outside it. For restricted AI technologies:

• Deploying a model locally on servers abroad counts as a technology export. If the deployment is on the company's own overseas cloud, an automatic licence and similar facilitation may apply.
• Offering the model through an API, an app or web interface, SaaS, or a lightweight on-device version is not a technology export.
• Open-sourcing, building and operating compute centres abroad, chip tape-outs abroad, joint research using foreign resources and taking part in international standards work are named as cases where automatic licensing applies, which the spokesperson describes as close to "report and ship".
• Technology already public through open source or published papers is outside the scope.

The spokesperson adds that the large majority of AI technology would remain freely exportable once the rules take effect.

The temporary registration and DeepSeek and MiniMax

The announcement requires exporters to register on the ministry's technology-trade platform before exporting any listed technology, from publication until the revised catalogue takes effect. Registration is required for transferring ownership abroad, licensing domestic technology for use abroad, or a domestic owner or controller becoming a foreign entity; the ministry can add other cases by notice. The filing asks for basic details of exporter and recipient, the country or region, the technology and its use, and expected value. Note that the registration duty falls on the exporter in China, not on users of a model abroad.

On 26 October The Register wrote that Chinese state media reported on the preceding Friday that two companies, named elsewhere as DeepSeek and MiniMax, had received authorisation to continue exports. A secondary outlet, Pasquale Pillitteri, traces the original report to Yuyuan Tantian, an account linked to state broadcaster CCTV, dated 22 October, and says that account describes the two as the first to complete the temporary registration. That outlet also notes the ministry has not published a list of registered companies and that the CCTV-linked account does not mention Zhipu, Moonshot or Alibaba. We have not seen a MOFCOM statement confirming either company, so treat the names as reported, not confirmed. Note also a difference in wording: The Register describes MOFCOM as having "announced the restrictions" and speaks of licences, while the ministry's own text and the AP describe a draft under consultation with registration in the interim.

What it means

For developers using Chinese models through APIs, the ministry's answer is that nothing changes: API calls are outside the technology-export definition. For teams that download open weights and run them on their own servers, the draft appears to keep that route open for already-public models and to apply automatic licensing for future open-source publication, but the practical boundary will depend on how the ministry applies it. Companies that planned to deploy a restricted frontier model in a customer's own data centre abroad face the clearest new hurdle. For Chinese labs, registration adds a record the state can use to say yes or no to specific transfers, and the reported DeepSeek and MiniMax registrations suggest national champions are being allowed to keep shipping.

What we don't know yet

• The annex: which models, by what technical thresholds, are caught, and how many of the 23 AI items are proposed bans versus restrictions.
• Whether the registered-company reports are accurate, and which other labs have registered.
• When the revised catalogue takes effect and how much the draft changes after comments close on 15 November.
• How "automatic licence" will work for open-weight releases in practice, including timing.

What to watch next

Watch for the ministry publishing the final catalogue and its date, any official list of registered firms, and whether Chinese labs' next open-weight releases (a licence-restricted or delayed release would be a signal) are affected. Also watch US and EU responses, since European sovereignty plans that rely on open-weight models hosted locally depend on the supply of such releases.

Sources

• MOFCOM and MOST Announcement No. 48 of 2026, via Xinhua (primary, in Chinese)
• MOFCOM spokesperson's Q&A on the catalogue revision, via Beijing News (in Chinese)
• Associated Press: China moves to curb tech exports, including AI, citing national security risks
• The Register: After threatening AI export bans, China allows DeepSeek to keep selling
• Pasquale Pillitteri: China announces export controls on 23 AI technologies