When President Trump announced late last year that Nvidia could sell one of its most powerful chips to China, the deal looked like a rare win-win in a fraying geopolitical relationship. It would provide a major boost for China’s artificial intelligence ambitions, while handing a win to America’s leading chipmaker.

当特朗普总统去年底宣布英伟达可以向中国出售其最强大的芯片之一时，这笔交易在日渐脆弱的地缘政治关系中看起来像是一个罕见的双赢。它将为中国的人工智能雄心提供重大助力，同时为这家美国领先的芯片制造商带来一场胜利。

Cutting-edge A.I. systems run on staggering amounts of computing power, and Nvidia’s chips are considered the gold standard worldwide. Chinese competitors have yet to build anything that rivals Nvidia’s best, and Mr. Trump’s decision undercut years of U.S. policy designed to keep those chips out of China’s reach.

尖端人工智能系统的运行需要依靠惊人的算力，而英伟达的芯片被公认为全球的金标准。中国的竞争对手尚未制造出任何能与英伟达最好的芯片相媲美的产品，而特朗普的决定削弱了美国多年来旨在让中国无法得到这些芯片的政策。

Former Biden and Trump administration officials warned the move could squander the lead that American A.I. companies held over Chinese rivals, by helping China close the gap until its own chipmakers could catch up to Nvidia.

前拜登和特朗普政府官员警告称，此举可能会断送美国人工智能公司对中国对手保持的领先优势，因为这会帮助中国缩小差距，直到其自身的芯片制造商能够赶上英伟达。

But six months on, Beijing has not allowed any of its companies to buy a single one.

但六个月过去了，北京没有允许其任何一家公司购买哪怕是一颗该芯片。

The impasse lays bare the depth of the mistrust between the world’s technological superpowers. For decades, U.S. and Chinese companies worked side by side to create products like the iPhone that upended industries. But the relationship has soured over the past decade as both governments came to see technology as the fulcrum of economic supremacy.

这种僵局暴露了这两个世界科技超级大国之间不信任程度之深。几十年来，美国和中国公司齐心协力创造了像iPhone这样颠覆行业的产品。但在过去十年中，随着两国政府都开始将技术视为经济霸权的支点，这种关系已经恶化。

Nvidia is trapped in the middle. The chipmaker became the world’s most valuable company by making its semiconductors indispensable to running A.I. systems. But Washington and Beijing increasingly view that technology as a matter of national security, especially after watching how it has been used to coordinate attacks in Gaza, Ukraine, Venezuela and Iran.

英伟达被夹在中间。这家芯片制造商通过使其半导体成为运行人工智能系统不可或缺的一部分，成为了全球市值最高的公司。但华盛顿和北京越来越多地将该技术视为国家安全问题，尤其是在目睹了它如何被用来协调在加沙、乌克兰、委内瑞拉和伊朗的袭击之后。

Rather than turn to Nvidia, Chinese officials have pushed domestic companies toward homegrown alternatives from chipmakers like Huawei and Cambricon. After meeting last week in Beijing with Xi Jinping, China’s leader, Mr. Trump said that China’s lack of interest in the chip he had approved, known as the H200, had been driven in part by this push for industrial self-reliance.

中国官员没有转向英伟达，而是推动国内公司采用来自华为和寒武纪等芯片制造商的本土替代方案。上周在北京与中国领导人习近平会面后，特朗普表示，中国对他批准的H200芯片缺乏兴趣，部分原因正是这种对产业自主可控的推动。

“They chose not to. They want to try to develop their own,” he said.

“他们选择不买。他们想尝试开发自己的芯片，”他说。

华为人工智能超级计算机去年在上海展出。中国官员已引导企业转向华为和寒武纪等本土芯片制造商。

Chinese A.I. companies are hungry for more computing power. Kevin Xu, founder of Interconnected Capital, a hedge fund that invests in artificial intelligence technologies, recently spent nine days in China meeting with leading A.I. start-ups. Every one of them, he said, pointed to the lack of computing power as the biggest factor holding them back.

中国的人工智能公司极度渴望更多的算力。投资于人工智能技术的对冲基金互联资本创始人徐凯文最近在中国待了九天，与领先的人工智能初创公司会面。他说，他们每一个人都指出算力的缺乏是阻碍他们发展的最大因素。

But Chinese companies are now starting to build their A.I. systems around those constraints rather than waiting for them to ease. And Beijing wants them to keep doing exactly that.

但中国公司现在正开始围绕这些限制来构建他们的人工智能系统，而不是等待限制缓解。北京希望他们继续这样做。

“It’s a balancing act,” Mr. Xu said. The government knows its companies need more computing power, but it also wants to push domestic chipmakers to get better and faster.

“这是一种平衡之举，”徐凯文说。政府知道企业需要更多的算力，但它也想推动国内芯片制造商变得更好、更快。

Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, who traveled to Beijing last week as part of Mr. Trump’s delegation, said he didn’t bring up the H200 chip with Chinese officials. But he remains optimistic that the market will eventually open, given China’s enormous appetite for A.I. chips.

英伟达首席执行官黄仁勋上周随特朗普代表团前往北京，他表示他没有向中国官员提及H200芯片。但鉴于中国对人工智能芯片的巨大胃口，他仍对市场最终将会开放保持乐观。

“The Chinese government has to decide — how much of their local market do they want to protect and how much of their local market do they want to expand with more A.I. capacity,” Mr. Huang said in an appearance on Bloomberg TV on Monday. “My sense is that over time, the market will open.”

“中国政府必须做出决定——有多少本土市场是需要保护的，又有多少是需要用更多的AI能力来扩张的，”黄仁勋周一在彭博电视台节目中表示。“我的感觉是，随着时间的推移，市场将会开放。”

In March, Mr. Xi laid out an ambitious plan to deepen China’s already decade-long push to rely on its own technology. Over the next five years, he wants the nation to pursue breakthroughs in fields like A.I., quantum computing and fusion energy.

今年3月，习近平提出了一项宏伟的计划，以深化中国已经进行了十年的自主技术推动。在接下来的五年里，他希望国家在人工智能、量子计算和聚变能等领域追求突破。

The drive for self-sufficiency is becoming more attainable as domestic chipmakers rapidly improve their offerings. Huawei, China’s tech giant, and Cambricon, a start-up, and others are now producing chips that perform on par with the H200.

随着国内芯片制造商迅速改进其产品，这种对自给自足的追求正变得更具可行性。中国科技巨头华为、初创公司寒武纪等现在生产的芯片性能已与H200旗鼓相当。

DeepSeek, the start-up that has come to symbolize China’s rising A.I. capabilities, has also become a sign of the country’s shift away from Nvidia.

已经成为中国日益增强的人工智能能力象征的初创公司深度求索也成为了该国告别英伟达的标志。

When it released its latest artificial intelligence model last month, the company said for the first time that its new system had been optimized to run on chips made by the Chinese tech giant Huawei — a small but meaningful milestone in China’s long-running effort to develop advanced technologies at home.

上个月发布其最新的人工智能模型时，深度求索首次表示，其新系统已针对在中国科技巨头华为制造的芯片上运行进行了优化——这是中国在本土开发先进技术的长期努力中一个微小但富有意义的里程碑。

Although Washington and Beijing have effectively blocked Nvidia’s most advanced products from the world’s largest chip market, the restrictions have done little to slow the chipmaker’s business. On Wednesday, Nvidia reported a quarterly profit of $58.3 billion. The company said it recorded no sales from its signature A.I. chips in China and does not expect that to change anytime soon.

尽管华盛顿和北京实际上已阻止了英伟达最先进的产品进入这个全球最大的芯片市场，但这些限制几乎没有减缓这家芯片制造商的业务。周三，英伟达报告季度利润达583亿美元。该公司表示，其标志性人工智能芯片在中国没有录得销售额，并且预计短期内不会改变。

MiniMax高管在1月该公司香港上市仪式上。

While Chinese tech companies now use domestic chips for some tasks, they still rely on Nvidia chips for training, the demanding process of teaching an A.I. model how to function. Part of the reason is that Chinese chipmakers have struggled to manufacture advanced chips at volumes sufficient to meet demand.

虽然现在在某些任务中使用国内芯片，中国科技公司仍在模型训练（教人工智能模型如何运行的严苛过程）上依赖英伟达芯片。部分原因在于，中国芯片制造商一直难以制造出足以满足需求的先进芯片产量。

Many Chinese A.I. companies are using a workaround to avoid buying their own Nvidia chips. They are renting remote access to chips housed in data centers operated by other companies, often outside the country. When two A.I. start-ups, MiniMax and Zhipu AI, went public in Hong Kong earlier this year, their disclosures showed the companies were spending several times their revenue to train their models using “cloud services.”

许多中国人工智能公司正在使用一种变通方法来避免购买自己的英伟达芯片。他们正在租用对安置在其他公司运营的数据中心（通常在境外）的芯片的远程访问权。当两家人工智能初创公司Minimax和智谱AI今年早些时候在香港上市时，其披露的信息显示，这些公司正花费数倍于其收入的资金来使用“云服务”训练他们的模型。

But this approach has drawbacks, said Jiang Tianjiao, an associate professor at Fudan University in Shanghai. It means slower processing times and a higher risk of data leaks. It makes Chinese companies reliant on third-party data center operators, which could cut them off at any time. They also face the risk that the United States could pass regulations to close off remote access to Nvidia chips altogether, a step that some officials in Washington have championed.

但复旦大学副教授江天骄表示，这种方法存在弊端。这意味着更慢的处理时间和更高的数据泄露风险。它使中国公司依赖第三方数据中心运营商，后者可能随时切断他们的连接。他们还面临着美国可能通过法规彻底封锁对英伟达芯片远程访问的风险，这是华盛顿一些官员所倡导的举措。

Even so, Chinese companies are spending far less on A.I. overall than their American rivals. They are expected to spend $123 billion on A.I. chips and data centers this year, according to Bernstein Research. U.S. tech companies, by contrast, are expected to spend about $1 trillion.

即便如此，中国公司在人工智能方面的整体支出仍远低于其美国对手。根据伯恩斯坦研究公司的数据，预计他们今年将在人工智能芯片和数据中心上花费123亿美元。相比之下，美国科技公司的花费预计约为1万亿美元。

The lighter spending reflects both ambition and means. Chinese companies have been slower than their American peers to bet their futures on A.I. and they have less revenue to put behind it. That restraint might ease the pressure on Beijing to clear the way for Nvidia purchases, said Chris McGuire, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who worked on chip export controls under President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

较少的支出既反映了雄心，也反映了财力。中国公司在将未来押注于人工智能方面比美国同行慢，且他们可投入其中的收入也较少。在美国总统小约瑟夫·R·拜登任内从事芯片出口管制工作的外交关系协会高级研究员克里斯·麦奎尔表示，这种克制可能也让北京不必急于放开英伟达芯片的购买。

黄仁勋在去年的一次主题演讲中手持一块Grace Blackwell NVL72晶圆。

Beijing may also be wary of allowing Nvidia purchases on national security grounds. Last July, the internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, summoned Nvidia to explain security risks associated with the chips it had developed for the Chinese market.

北京对采购英伟达的谨慎态度可能也有国家安全的考虑。去年7月，网络主管机构国家互联网信息办公室曾约谈英伟达，要求其解释与其专为中国市场开发的芯片相关的安全风险。

Nvidia has said that its products contain no back doors that would give anyone remote access. But Chinese suspicions have made it difficult to restart sales.

英伟达曾表示，其产品不包含任何能给任何人提供远程访问权限的后门。但中国的怀疑使得重启销售变得困难。

Mr. Huang has not given up on China. After a last-minute invitation to last week’s summit, he spent time in Beijing posing for photographs with people on the street and slurping noodles on the sidewalk, part of an effort to keep ties alive in the hope that Nvidia can one day return.

黄仁勋没有放弃中国。在最后一刻收到上周峰会的邀请后，他来到北京街头与行人合影，在路边吃面条，这是为了保持联系而做出的一份努力，寄望于英伟达有一天能够回归。

His shuttling between Washington and Beijing underscores the value he places on the Chinese market and the profits Nvidia could reap there, said Wendy Chang, a senior analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a think tank. But that eagerness, she said, may embolden Beijing to hold out for bigger concessions.

智库墨卡托中国研究中心资深分析师张文怡(Wendy Chang)表示，黄仁勋在华盛顿和北京之间的奔波凸显了他对中国市场的重视，以及英伟达在这里可以攫取到的利润。但她说，这种迫切性可能会让北京更有底气，从而要求得到更大的让步。

At Washington’s request, Nvidia has held back its most powerful chips from China, restricting sales to the United States and its allies. That chip, which Nvidia calls Blackwell, outperforms anything currently available in the Chinese market.

应华盛顿的要求，英伟达没有向中国出售其最强大的芯片，将这些芯片的销售限制在美国及其盟友。这款被英伟达称为Blackwell的芯片性能超越了目前中国市场上可获得的任何产品。

“By playing hard to get, Beijing may be hoping for more leverage in access to better chips,” Ms. Chang said.

“通过欲擒故纵，北京可能正希望在获取更好的芯片方面获得更多筹码，”张文怡说。