State-linked Chinese entities are using cloud services provided by Amazon.com Inc or its rivals to access advanced US chips and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that they cannot acquire otherwise, public tender documents showed.
The US government has restricted exports of high-end AI chips to China over the past two years, citing the need to limit the capabilities of the Chinese military.
However, providing access to such chips or advanced AI models through the cloud is not a contravention of US regulations, as only exports or transfers of a commodity, software or technology are regulated.
Photo: Reuters
A Reuters review of more than 50 tender documents posted over the past year on publicly available Chinese databases showed that at least 11 Chinese entities have sought access to restricted US technologies or cloud services.
Among those, four explicitly named Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a cloud service provider, although they accessed the services through Chinese intermediary companies rather than from AWS directly.
The tender documents show the breadth of strategies Chinese entities are employing to secure advanced computing power and access to generative AI models. They also underscore how US companies are capitalizing on China’s growing demand for computing power.
“AWS complies with all applicable US laws, including trade laws, regarding the provision of AWS services inside and outside of China,” a spokesperson for Amazon’s cloud business said.
AWS controls nearly one-third of the global cloud infrastructure market, according to research firm Canalys.
In China, AWS is the sixth-largest cloud service provider, according to research firm IDC.
Shenzhen University spent 200,000 yuan (US$28,027) on an AWS account to gain access to cloud servers powered by Nvidia A100 and H100 chips for an unspecified project, according to a March tender document.
It got the service via an intermediary, Yunda Technology Ltd Co (成都運達科技), the document showed.
Exports to China of the two Nvidia chips, which are used to power large language models (LLM) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are banned by the US.
Shenzhen University and Yunda Technology did not respond to requests for comment.
Nvidia declined to comment on Shenzhen University’s spending or on any of the other Chinese entities’ deals.
Zhejiang Lab (之江實驗室), a research institute developing its own LLM, GeoGPT, said in a tender document in April that it intended to spend 184,000 yuan to purchase AWS cloud computing services, as its AI model could not get enough computing power from homegrown Alibaba (阿里巴巴).
A spokesperson for Zhejiang Lab said that it did not follow through with the purchase, but did not respond to questions about the reasoning behind the decision or how it met its LLM computing power requirements.
Alibaba’s cloud unit, Aliyun (阿里雲), did not respond to a request for comment.
The US government is trying to tighten regulations to restrict access through the cloud.
“This loophole has been a concern of mine for years, and we are long overdue to address it,” US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said in a statement, referring to the remote access of advanced US computing through the cloud by foreign entities.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
TAIWAN ISSUE: US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on the first day of meetings that ‘it wouldn’t be a US-China summit without the Taiwan issue coming up’ There were no surprises on the first day of the summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday, as the government reiterated that cross-strait stability is crucial to the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the world. As the two presidents met for a highly anticipated summit yesterday, Chinese state media reported that Xi warned Trump that missteps regarding Taiwan could push their two countries into “conflict.” Trump arrived in China with accolades for his host, calling Xi a “great leader” and “friend,” and extending an invitation to visit the White House
RSS