THE ESSENTIALS IN 30 SECONDS

  • Reuters, citing two people familiar with the matter, reports that about 600,000 H200 chips are stored in Hong Kong awaiting shipment to mainland China.
  • Beijing has not approved large-volume imports, although several big Chinese internet firms have each received about 10,000 H200s in recent months.
  • An eight-chip H200 server was offered for more than 6 million yuan on China's unofficial market by late October, about three times its price a year earlier.

Roughly 600,000 Nvidia H200 accelerators are being held in Hong Kong while Chinese authorities decline to approve large-scale imports into the mainland, according to a Reuters report published on November 5. The news agency based the figure on two people familiar with the matter. The reports that relay it do not say who owns the stockpile, and Nvidia did not respond to Reuters' request for comment.

What the report says

The H200 is not Nvidia's most recent data-center processor, but Chinese technology companies still want it to train and run large AI models, in part because it works with Nvidia's software ecosystem. According to Reuters, Beijing has let some units in. One source said several major Chinese internet companies have each obtained about 10,000 H200s over the past few months, and three people said small, unquantified volumes reached the mainland through intermediaries and indirect routes. Bulk imports, however, have not been cleared.

The coverage links the hold-up to industrial policy. Beijing wants large groups such as Alibaba, ByteDance, Tencent and DeepSeek to rely more on Chinese-made processors, particularly for inference, the stage where trained models answer requests.

Prices on the grey market

Scarce authorised supply has pushed prices up on China's unofficial market. By the end of October, a server with eight H200 chips was being offered for more than 6 million yuan, about $900,000, or roughly three times what it cost a year earlier, Reuters reported, citing one source. Servers built on Nvidia's newer Blackwell chips, which Washington does not allow to be sold to China, were advertised at more than 20 million yuan each.

Context and open questions

The situation follows a reversal on the US side. After President Donald Trump decided in December 2025 to allow limited H200 sales, the US began reviewing export licences for China case by case in January 2026. Later that month, Beijing approved a first batch of imports for ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent. Since then, according to The Next Web's summary of the Reuters report, Chinese restrictions have prevented Nvidia from shipping all the chips it is licensed to sell.

Demand for other Nvidia products appears to remain strong: an earlier report said ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent ordered more than 3 million RTX Pro cards, a less powerful product designed to comply with US rules. Whether Beijing will release the Hong Kong stock, and on what timeline, is not known. The figures come from anonymous sources and have not been confirmed by Nvidia or Chinese authorities.