China is preparing to restrict exports of 40 technologies spanning artificial intelligence, semiconductors and solar manufacturing, according to a Fortune report — a direct answer to years of U.S. export bans that have squeezed its chip industry.

The proposal, if enacted, would mark a reversal of roles. Washington has spent the past several years barring Chinese firms from advanced chips, tools and the equipment needed to make them. Now Beijing wants its own list. And it aims at something the U.S. can't easily replace.

What technologies are on China's draft list?

The 40 items reportedly cluster in three areas:

• Artificial intelligence — model technologies and related capabilities where Chinese firms hold leading positions
• Chips — semiconductor technologies where China controls meaningful supply
• Solar — the photovoltaics supply chain, where Chinese producers dominate global manufacturing capacity

The solar inclusion matters most. China refines the overwhelming majority of the world's polysilicon and produces most solar wafers, cells and modules. Restricting exports there would hit Western renewable-energy buildouts harder than any AI clause.

Why is China doing this now?

Timing tells the story. Since 2022, successive U.S. export-control packages have cut Chinese companies off from advanced GPUs, leading-edge fabrication equipment and the talent networks that move with them. Washington's allies in Japan and the Netherlands followed with their own tooling restrictions.

Beijing's draft list signals it has studied that playbook and found its own leverage. Rather than matching restrictions node-for-node — China cannot yet restrict EUV lithography it doesn't supply — the list targets categories where Chinese production is the global default. Solar is the clearest case. Certain battery-adjacent and materials technologies have long sat in similar territory.

What does the change mean for supply chains?

For chipmakers, the immediate commercial effect is likely modest. China does not export the leading-edge process nodes or the deposition and lithography tools that U.S. sanctions deny it. But the AI items on the list could complicate matters for Western companies that have grown reliant on Chinese AI models, open-weight releases and application-layer technologies.

Solar is where the money is. Developers in the U.S. and Europe have already watched module prices swing on Chinese production decisions. A formal export-licensing regime, even a loosely enforced one, adds a policy risk premium to every procurement contract signed with Chinese suppliers — and accelerates the diversified capacity buildouts already underway in the U.S., India and Southeast Asia.

Is this a negotiating tactic or permanent policy?

The list is still a plan, not a rule. Chinese regulators have, in the past, floated export controls and then trimmed them after pushback; a 2023 gallium and germanium restriction took months to bite and carried visible exemptions. The 40-technology list could harden into licensing requirements, or it could stay a signal — a reminder that export controls cut both ways.

What's certain is the direction. After years of absorbing sanctions, China is drafting its first broad, forward-leaning export-control regime aimed at technologies the West actually buys. How many of the 40 items survive into final regulation, and how strictly Beijing enforces them, will shape solar pricing and AI supply chains through 2025 and beyond.