China's Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Science and Technology published Announcement No. 48 of 2026 on October 16, opening public consultation on revising the national catalog of technologies prohibited or restricted from export. The proposal covers 40 technologies across three fields: 23 in artificial intelligence, five in biomedicine and 12 in photovoltaics, and applies interim pre-export registration management to the listed technologies while consultation runs.
The AI entries span large foundation models, intelligent agents, compute clusters and related information processing technologies. The announcement explicitly excludes technologies that have already entered the public domain through open source releases or academic publication.
The biomedicine entries cover cell and gene therapy, small nucleic acid drugs and pathogenic microorganism technologies, with automatic licensing convenience for out-licensing deals that do not transfer ownership. The photovoltaic entries cover polysilicon, wafer and cell manufacturing, including the key and core equipment carrying those technologies.
Public comments run from October 16 through November 15, 2026, by email to the ministry. The catalog revision is a proposal under consultation, not yet a final rule; if adopted it would require export licenses or registrations for covered Chinese AI technology transfers abroad.