China Locks Down AI Talent as Travel Restrictions Expand to Private Firms

China is increasingly keeping its best AI talent to itself | TechCrunch

For China's top AI researchers, the borders are quickly closing. Researchers, startup founders and executives at private firms are now reportedly subject to travel restrictions, with some of the industry's most prominent figures required to seek government approval before heading abroad. The restrictions reflect a wider shift in how Beijing manages the brain-drain in the AI sector, which has seen skyrocketing demand for talent to train and tweak AI models as the global tech industry taps into this new avenue to seek growth. In March 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese authorities had been advising top AI founders and researchers to avoid traveling to the U.S., an early signal of just how closely Beijing has come to guard AI as both an economic asset and a national security priority. Restrictions appear to have intensified in the wake of Beijing narrowing its focus on the Manus-Meta deal. China has barred Manus' two co-founders from leaving the country while its regulators investigate whether Meta's $2 billion acquisition of the AI startup runs afoul of Beijing's foreign investment rules, according to The Financial Times. The co-founders of Manus are now said to be exploring options to fulfill Beijing's demand to unwind the deal, including raising about $1 billion from external investors to buy back the company from the social media giant. The AI race between the East and the West is closer than it's ever been. Stanford's latest index shows the performance gap between the top U.S. and Chinese models had shrunk to just 2.7% as of March 2026, from about 31% in 2023, raising fresh questions about how long America can hold its lead. The U.S. still dominates in terms of model quality and high-impact patents, but China is fast catching up if not outpacing American AI labs, in publications, citations and patent volume. In addition to travel restrictions, China reportedly plans to keep a check on U.S. capital flowing into its top AI firms, requiring government sign-off before tech companies like Moonshot AI, StepFun, and ByteDance can accept American capital, per Bloomberg reported in April. The news of travel restrictions follows a series of escalating economic countermeasures: in 2025, Beijing imposed two rounds of export controls on 14 rare earth materials critical to high-tech military manufacturing, and separately barred state-funded data centers from deploying foreign AI chips.

Chinese AI experts in private firms now required to secure approval before international travel -- Beijing enforces policy to secure top-tier talent, expands measures beyond government

Some Chinese AI industry leaders must get the green light from Beijing before they can take that international vacation. China now requires people working in AI at private firms to secure travel approval before leaving the country. According to Bloomberg, the restrictions apply to individuals working in state-owned firms, startup founders, and those employed by private companies, as the central government considers them important strategic assets. China has already been limiting international travel for key individuals such as senior researchers at public educational institutions, nuclear scientists, and even top executives of government-owned companies, but extending the restriction to private firms and individuals is an uncommon move, even for Beijing. There's no official guidance yet on which roles, expertise, or seniority will be included in the travel ban. However, Bloomberg sources say that the individuals added to the list were assessed based on their impact on China's AI ambitions, not just where they work or their position within their company. This move is an expansion of a former government directive wherein some AI engineers had mandatory reporting of any overseas travel plan, although they were still free to go abroad as needed. This shows that Beijing considers AI as a strategic advantage and that the people leading the industry are considered crucial for the country's advancement. This news comes months after Meta's surprise purchase of Manus AI, which China wants to unwind to prevent the U.S. from acquiring Chinese AI talent and intellectual property. Although the two aren't directly related, the report says that the new policy is designed to protect against the leaking of key technologies, such as the one being developed by the Chinese startup that moved to Singapore. Some American AI tech companies are spending billions of dollars to acquire talent. For example, aside from the $2.5-billion Manus deal, Meta has been offering $100 million bonuses and even bigger salaries to hire experts from other companies, with one founder claiming that the social media giant offered them $1.25 billion for over four years. The massive amounts of money involved in AI are quite tempting; that's why Beijing is taking steps to protect its own interests. However, this might have the effect of discouraging Chinese talent based abroad from going home and reestablishing their careers in the country. It could also force domestic AI engineers with dreams of going abroad to leave earlier, while they're still not included in the travel restrictions list, and develop their skills in a foreign country instead of at home. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

China extends AI travel curbs from DeepSeek to other private firms

The first publicly reported case came in March, when DeepSeek staff began surrendering passports shortly after the lab's R1 model briefly upended assumptions about how much compute Chinese frontier labs needed to match Silicon Valley benchmarks. The Wall Street Journal reported around the same time that Chinese authorities had begun warning top AI entrepreneurs against US travel, citing fears that researchers could leak sensitive technical information abroad, that American companies could acquire valuable IP, or that executives could be detained as diplomatic leverage. What is new in this week's Bloomberg account is the scope. The controls now reach further into the wider private-sector AI population, beyond DeepSeek and beyond the immediate post-R1 panic. The travel curbs sit alongside a tightening regime on the financial side. In late April, China's National Development and Reform Commission and several other agencies told leading AI firms, including Moonshot AI, StepFun and ByteDance, to reject US-origin capital in upcoming funding rounds unless they receive prior clearance. Several Chinese AI startups, including Moonshot, are considering corporate reincorporation from overseas jurisdictions back into mainland China after Beijing's blocking of Meta's $2bn acquisition of Manus and signals that offshore-incorporated entities will face harder domestic IPO approvals. The intent is, by now, hard to misread: capital, talent and corporate domicile are all to be pulled back inside Chinese borders. The technical case for Beijing's urgency is on display in the public benchmarks. Stanford's 2026 AI Index put the gap between the best US and Chinese models at 2.7%, down from 17.5 to 31.6 percentage points in mid-2023. China now files 69.7% of global AI patents, produces 23.2% of global AI publications and installs industrial robots at nine times the US rate. AI-talent migration to the US has dropped 89% since 2017. The combination of a narrowing capability gap and a steady inward concentration of talent is the context in which the passport policy makes sense to Beijing. The policy is not without cost. The passport requirement is, in practice, an exit ban applied informally and without judicial review, and it complicates international collaboration that has historically been a strength of Chinese academic AI work. Whether private-sector researchers will accept the trade-off remains to be tested. The travel controls are easier to impose than to enforce, particularly as the affected population grows from a handful of DeepSeek staff to several thousand researchers across the wider Chinese AI ecosystem. Neither DeepSeek nor Moonshot AI had commented publicly on the latest expansion by Tuesday evening Beijing time.

China Imposes Travel Limits on AI Workers at Private Firms: Report - Decrypt

Talent mobility in the country is becoming a national security variable, Decrypt was told. China is reportedly requiring some senior AI workers at private firms including Alibaba and DeepSeek to obtain approval before traveling abroad, tightening state control over a key part of the country's technology sector. The restrictions apply to startup founders, researchers, and executives considered important to China's AI ambitions, with authorities adding people to the list based on their strategic value rather than their seniority or employer, according to a Tuesday Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the matter. Questions remain, however, over how many workers could be affected, which roles qualify, and how broadly the curbs apply across China's AI industry. Some private-sector AI workers had previously been required to report overseas travel plans, though not necessarily to seek approval before leaving the country, per the report. Those reported curbs follow other signs of tighter state control over China-linked AI firms. Last month, Beijing ordered Meta to unwind its $2 billion acquisition of Manus, an AI startup that began in China before relocating to Singapore. China has also moved to reduce reliance on U.S. AI chips, pushing domestic firms toward Huawei and other local alternatives. DeepSeek, one of the firms named in the report, has drawn scrutiny, with the Trump administration weighing restrictions against the Chinese AI startup over national security concerns. A wider return flow of Chinese scientists and engineers in AI and semiconductors has also accelerated, per reports from SCMP. Those cases include semiconductor researcher Da Bo's return to China after work tied to TSMC's 3nm plant in Japan, and Oxford-trained AI chip researcher Song Yuhang joining Nanjing University's School of Artificial Intelligence. The reported curbs complicate China's "reverse brain drain" narrative, Joshua Chu, lawyer, lecturer, and co-chair of the Hong Kong Web3 Association, told Decrypt. Returning chip and AI researchers have been framed as proof that Beijing can bring elite talent home with money, titles, and prestige, he noted. For frontier AI and semiconductor researchers at Chinese firms, travel has become part of the state's security calculus, Chu explained. Their passports and conference schedules can be treated as "national security variables" when Beijing worries about technology leakage, he added, pointing to how this could blur the line between private enterprise and the state, while recasting the bargain for talent returning to China. Top scientists and engineers once moved through a more open global economy after the Cold War, Chu observed. The fact that exit controls for private-sector AI talent are being discussed in 2026 suggests that, for some countries, "the logic of keeping human capital 'in' is starting to win out over the logic of letting ideas and people flow freely," he added.