China Blocks Nvidia H200. Hassabis: "They Have Almost Caught Up"

On January 17, 2026, an unexpected turn in the "chip war" came to light. Chinese customs de facto blocked the import of US-authorized Nvidia H200 accelerators, halting lines at several suppliers. Experts interpret this as a retaliatory sanction and Beijing's confidence in its own Huawei Ascend processors.

Simultaneously, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis stated in a CNBC interview that the technological gap between the West and China has narrowed to "a few months." According to him, attempts to isolate the PRC via hardware have failed: Chinese researchers have learned to efficiently train SOTA models on less powerful but available hardware. The H200 blockade is a signal: China is no longer critically dependent on Nvidia.

Source: Financial Times / CNBC