The Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Science and Technology published Announcement No. 48 of 2026 on 16 October 2026. It opens public comment on a revision of the Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited and Restricted from Export and at the same time imposes interim registration on exports of the technologies proposed for listing. Comment runs from 16 October to 15 November 2026.
The announcement cites the Foreign Trade Law of the People's Republic of China and the Regulations on the Administration of Technology Import and Export of the People's Republic of China as its legal basis. Forty technologies are proposed for addition: 23 in artificial intelligence, covering large models, agents, computing clusters and information processing; five in biomedicine, covering cell and gene therapy, small nucleic acid drugs and pathogenic microorganism technologies; and twelve in photovoltaics, covering polysilicon, wafer and cell manufacturing together with the key equipment that carries those technologies. Technologies already in the public domain through open source release or academic publication are excluded.
Interim registration runs from 16 October 2026 until the revised Catalogue is formally issued and takes effect. An exporter registers through the technology trade management application on the Ministry of Commerce unified business platform before export, and exports already begun but not completed are caught. Registration is triggered by transfer of technology ownership abroad, including assignment of intellectual property, by licensing of domestic technology for use overseas, by a change of ownership or actual control to a foreign entity, and by other cases the Ministry specifies. A Chinese developer licensing a covered model for use outside China, and a foreign firm taking that technology under licence, both sit inside those triggers.
A registration form carries the basic details of exporter and recipient, the destination country or region, the technology and its intended use, and the expected export value. Several technologies going to the same recipient may be registered together, and other cases generally need separate forms. For biomedicine licensing that does not transfer ownership, automatic licensing and other facilitation measures are proposed.
Licentium advises technology companies, model developers and investors on export control exposure in cross border AI licensing and deployment. Work we undertake includes export control classification, licensing structure review, registration filings and jurisdictional risk mapping for model and data transfers.