US Efforts to Curb China’s Access to Advanced Tech Stalled by Industry Lobbying

Repeated efforts by US lawmakers to prevent China from accessing powerful American artificial intelligence (AI) chips have failed amid intense lobbying from the technology industry, highlighting deep divisions between national security concerns and economic interests.

Since September last year, members of Congress have introduced four separate proposals aimed at closing a loophole that allows Chinese firms to bypass export bans by renting high-performance AI chips through US cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Each attempt, however, was blocked following heavy opposition from more than 100 lobbyists representing major tech companies and trade associations, disclosure records show.

The issue is expected to feature prominently as former President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping meet Thursday, with the sale of US technology to China emerging as one of the most contentious points in their broader economic and security dialogue.

An Associated Press investigation found that despite public warnings over China’s surveillance state and human rights abuses, successive Republican and Democratic administrations have allowed — and at times facilitated — the sale of US-made technology to Chinese government agencies, security forces, and state-backed companies.

Even as Congress sought tighter controls, China purchased $20.7 billion worth of chipmaking equipment from US firms in 2024 to strengthen its domestic semiconductor industry, according to a congressional committee report this month.

Critics say the repeated failures to act underscore the powerful influence of the American tech sector, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying on China-related trade issues. Industry leaders argue that stricter export rules would only accelerate China’s efforts to develop homegrown alternatives.

“Continuing to ban US computing from commercial markets only benefits foreign competition,” chipmaker Nvidia said in a statement defending its stance. The company maintains it does not engage in surveillance work or collaborate with Chinese police.

Meanwhile, Intel and AMD have faced scrutiny for their roles in new government-backed agreements announced by Trump earlier this year. Under one deal, the administration agreed to lift export restrictions on advanced chip sales to China in exchange for a 15 percent cut of revenues — a move national security experts warn could aid China’s military and intelligence programs.

Human rights advocates have condemned what they describe as Washington’s unwillingness to confront corporate interests. “It’s driven by profit,” said Zhou Fengsuo, a former Tiananmen Square protest leader now based in the US. “This is a strategic failure by the United States.”

Despite decades of bipartisan pledges to tighten oversight, loopholes continue to allow Chinese firms — including sanctioned surveillance giants Hikvision and Dahua — to access American cloud services abroad. Similar attempts to regulate tech exports after the Tiananmen massacre and during subsequent administrations also collapsed under industry pressure.

As both nations vie for technological supremacy, the failure to close these gaps leaves Washington struggling to balance its economic ambitions with its national security promises — a tension that continues to define US-China relations.