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A recent meeting between Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) CEO Lisa Su signals a potential loosening of US chip export policies, which could reopen high-end semiconductor sales, including artificial intelligence chips, to select Chinese firms, according to analysts.
During their meeting on Monday, He reiterated that Beijing welcomed continued foreign investment, according to Xinhua News Agency.
Su praised the outcomes of last week’s summit between President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump, while affirming AMD’s commitment to expanding its business and increasing investment in China.
The meeting came days after 17 American business executives accompanied Trump on his state visit to Beijing. Su, who was not part of the delegation, appeared to be “catching up on missed homework”, said Peng Peng, executive chairman of the Guangdong Society of Reform, a think tank affiliated with the provincial government.
When viewed alongside Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s last-minute addition to the entourage, the developments suggest a strategic shift by Washington.
“The US appears to be pulling back on its aggressive tariff war and tech decoupling,” Peng said.
“Instead, they are shifting to a strategy of controlling only the absolute highest-end chips while opening up the upper-mid tier. This allows the US to maintain its cutting-edge lead without forfeiting the vast Chinese market – and it may even serve to suppress China’s push for technological ‘self-reliance’.”
“We estimate relatively advanced US AI chips to start entering China again in the second half of the year,” said Chim Lee, a senior analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Lee noted the current hurdles were “mainly on the Chinese side”, but added that approvals were ultimately likely to be granted, “conditionally”. Even so, he said tensions between Washington and Beijing over semiconductors would persist.
On Tuesday, Su reinforced AMD’s commitment during a keynote speech at the company’s AI developer day in Shanghai, describing China as “the world’s most dynamic AI ecosystem”. China, including Hong Kong, is AMD’s second-largest market, accounting for roughly a quarter of its global revenue last year.

“We want to interact with some of the smartest AI practitioners in the world,” Su said, aligning the company’s China strategy with AMD’s broader push to invest across “every layer of the AI stack”, from silicon and software to systems.
Su emphasised that both graphics processing units (GPUs) and central processing units remained essential to supporting AI agents across cloud, PC and edge computing, highlighting current partnerships with major Chinese cloud providers including Alibaba Cloud, ByteDance and Tencent Holdings.
Alibaba Group Holding owns the South China Morning Post.
Su’s trip followed a recent Reuters report indicating that the Trump administration had approved sales of Nvidia’s advanced H200 AI chips to roughly 10 Chinese companies. This licensing framework is expected to apply to AMD and Intel as well, marking a pivot from the strict export curbs enacted under the presidential administration of Joe Biden, which largely blocked advanced AI chip sales to China.
Despite the potential policy easing, American chipmakers face an uncertain Chinese market. Years of escalating US technology restrictions have forced Beijing to accelerate support for domestic semiconductor alternatives.
Chinese tech giants and state-linked data centres are actively reducing their dependence on foreign hardware. Local AI front runners – including DeepSeek, Alibaba and Moonshot AI – recently announced that several of their latest large language models could run successfully on Huawei Technologies’ Ascend chips.
Chinese GPU and AI chipmakers captured 41 per cent of the country’s AI accelerator server market last year as Nvidia’s market share dropped to 55 per cent, according to IDC data cited by Reuters. AMD held the remaining 4 per cent.
Later this week, Su is expected to visit AMD’s major research-and-development centre and headquarters in Shanghai to meet with local partners and employees.
Nvidia’s Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg after the recent China trip that the market would open as demand was “incredible”.
“President Xi was very clear that he wants China to be an even wider open market,” Huang said.


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‘Relatively advanced’ chips to start entering China in second half, as US is ‘pulling back’ on tariff war and tech decoupling, analysts say


‘Relatively advanced’ chips to start entering China in second half, as US is ‘pulling back’ on tariff war and tech decoupling, analysts say.


AMD CEO’s meeting with China’s vice-premier raises optimism about US AI chip imports

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}‘Relatively advanced’ chips to start entering China in second half, as US is ‘pulling back’ on tariff war and tech decoupling, analysts say

‘Relatively advanced’ chips to start entering China in second half, as US is ‘pulling back’ on tariff war and tech decoupling, analysts say