China is considering restricting foreigners' access to advanced AI models as a matter of national security
Chinese authorities have held meetings with major technology companies such as Alibaba and ByteDance to consider restricting external access to advanced AI models, with the proposal that the theft of private AI technology be considered a serious national security crime.
According to Reuters, last month, Chinese officials held a series of meetings with major technology companies in the country, which dealt with restricting third-party access to advanced artificial intelligence models.
The list of companies that the officials met included Alibaba, ByteDance, and the “Z.ai” company, which recently attracted attention with its GLM-5.2 model.
Chinese open source artificial intelligence models spread quickly around the world after the “Deep Sec R1” model, thanks to their low cost and capabilities. This means that any potential restrictions may raise costs for many companies around the world.
The talks were not limited to access restrictions only, as reports indicate that Chinese officials are also considering making the diversion or theft of private artificial intelligence technologies a serious crime under the National Security Law, in addition to setting new rules specifying the parties allowed to invest in emerging local artificial intelligence companies. The full scope of these potential restrictions is not yet clear.
Washington recently restricted its companies' access to Anthropic's "Fable 5" and "Mythos 5" models, and delayed the launch of OpenAI's "GPT 5.6" model, citing cybersecurity concerns.
This story was produced with machine-translation assistance, then went through human editorial review for accuracy and sourcing.

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