Beijing just approved its major tech companies — ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent, and now DeepSeek — to buy 400,000 NVIDIA H200 AI chips. This is a notable shift.

For years, US policy tried to restrict advanced chip access to China. China responded by accelerating domestic alternatives. Now Beijing is selectively reopening the door to US chips — with conditions.

The logic is not complicated. China needs cutting-edge AI chips faster than it can produce them domestically. The US needs Chinese demand to justify NVIDIA valuations and semiconductor investment cycles. Both sides have leverage. Both sides have needs.

What is emerging is not a decoupling but a managed dependency — chip access as a policy variable that can be adjusted based on the broader diplomatic relationship. The framing of this as purely about technology misses the point. Semiconductor trade is becoming a real-time instrument of geopolitical negotiation, adjusted quarter by quarter based on what each side wants from the other.