Just hours after Donald Trump left China, Beijing announced 'ban' on this American technology company

China has reportedly banned on the specialised graphics chip from American tech giant Nvidia. According to a report by the Financial Times, Beijing blacklisted Nvidia’s RTX 5090D V2 graphics card, which is an export-friendly version of its top-end RTX 5090 GPU. While the strict customs ban is a big development itself, this came on Friday (May 15) – just hours after US President Donald Trump and his delegation concluded a high-profile state visit to the country.It is to be noted that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was personally in China during the visit, and he was a last-minute addition to the American entourage, famously boarding Air Force One in Alaska to join Trump’s official guest list.The chip at the centre of the ban is the RTX 5090D V2, which has been specifically engineered by Nvidia to align with strict US export controls. The standard, store-bought RTX 5090 is considered too powerful under US law to be exported to China due to national security concerns. Nvidia built the “D” variant, which is a modified version with reduced memory (VRAM) and lower bandwidth designed primarily for Chinese video gamers and 3D digital artists.As per Tom’s Hardware, Chinese AI developers, however, quickly realised they could use these altered gaming cards to train AI models, and treated them as a workaround after being completely cut off from Nvidia's ultra-powerful, enterprise-grade Blackwell AI chips. This means that by blacklisting the card at Chinese customs, Beijing has effectively cut off its own developers from purchasing Nvidia hardware.It is to be noted that China has withheld approval for Chinese tech firms to purchase Nvidia’s H200 chips – another ‘de-fanged’ version of a flagship Nvidia chip (Blackwell) – despite the US clearing the way for the sales. Beijing is aiming for semiconductor independence and wants its domestic tech companies to invest in homegrown AI chips, such as those made by Huawei.Jensen Huang has been warning Washington officials for months about China’s ability to develop its own powerful chips. The Nvidia chief has argued that blocking chip sales to China won’t freeze China's AI development; instead, if China successfully builds an independent tech stack, the US may risk losing its economic and technological leverage over its biggest rival.Conversely, US officials have maintained that restricting advanced hardware is vital, arguing that allowing China access to any Nvidia-level computing power provides them with the tools necessary to jeopardize US national security.