The chips China spent three years being refused have finally landed — and Beijing wants most of them parked in Hong Kong, which cannot power them
The Financial Times reported on 19 August that ByteDance and Tencent have each taken delivery of roughly 10,000 Nvidia H200 accelerators over the past few weeks. These are the first H200s to physically reach Chinese buyers, and they close a loop that took three years to draw: Washington blocked the chips on military-use grounds, partially reopened the door in December 2025, and in May 2026 cleared about ten named Chinese firms to buy up to 100,000 each, with reported approvals across ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent totalling around 400,000 units. The odd part is what Beijing did next. Chinese authorities have asked the companies to route most of the licensed chips to Hong Kong rather than the mainland — and Hong Kong does not have anywhere near the data centre power to actually run them at that volume. So the hardware arrives, clears customs, and then sits somewhere it cannot be plugged in at scale.
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