Some 600,000 Nvidia H200 Chips Stuck in Hong Kong as Beijing Holds Back

Limited quotas, priority for local chips

Beijing has allowed some targeted imports. Several of the country's largest internet companies received about 10,000 H200 chips each. Sources say total quotas for American AI processors are tightly capped at up to 200,000 units. Authorities are also pressing companies to favor Chinese processors for inference, meaning the running of already trained AI models.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission did not respond to requests for comment. Nvidia, Alibaba, ByteDance, DeepSeek and Tencent also declined to comment.

Gray market prices soar

Since 2022 the United States has maintained export controls meant to restrict China's access to advanced Nvidia chips and the equipment used to make them. Buyers in China have turned to intermediaries and workarounds, which has pushed up prices on the unofficial market.

By the end of October 2026, a standard server with eight H200 accelerators cost 6 million yuan (about $900,000) on the mainland, three times the price a year earlier. Servers based on Nvidia's newest Blackwell chips, which fall under US export controls, were offered for more than 20 million yuan (about $2.8 million) each.

To get around tight limits on top-tier accelerators, Chinese tech giants have shifted to buying less powerful products that formally meet US export standards. ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have reportedly placed orders for more than 3 million Nvidia RTX Pro 5500 graphics accelerators, a contract worth over $35 billion.