China Extends AI Travel Curbs from DeepSeek to Other Private Firms
May 26, 2026 – 9:51 am
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Top researchers at private Chinese AI companies are being asked to surrender their passports, in a quiet expansion of the controls that began at DeepSeek earlier this year, according to a Bloomberg report on Tuesday citing people familiar with the matter.
The pattern is consistent and increasingly familiar. Senior AI researchers are being requested to give up their passports, officially justified as necessary to protect state or commercial secrets related to their work. The implementation can vary between company policy and government guidance, but the effect remains the same.
Bloomberg’s reporting places this move within the Communist Party’s classification of frontier AI as a strategic national asset.
The first publicly reported case occurred in March when DeepSeek staff began surrendering passports following the lab’s R1 model’s performance, which temporarily challenged Silicon Valley benchmarks. The Wall Street Journal reported around the same time that Chinese authorities were warning top AI entrepreneurs against US travel due to concerns about leaking sensitive information, potential IP acquisition by American companies, or executive detentions as diplomatic leverage.
This week’s Bloomberg account widens the scope of these controls, targeting a broader group of private-sector AI firms beyond DeepSeek and the immediate aftermath of the R1 incident.
These travel restrictions complement a tightening financial regime. In late April, China’s National Development and Reform Commission and several other agencies instructed leading AI firms, including Moonshot AI, StepFun, and ByteDance, to reject US-origin capital in upcoming funding rounds unless they received prior clearance.
Several Chinese AI startups, like Moonshot, are considering corporate reincorporation from overseas jurisdictions back into mainland China after Beijing blocked Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of Manus and signaled that offshore-incorporated entities face stricter domestic IPO approvals. The message is clear: capital, talent, and corporate domicile should all return to Chinese borders.
The technical justification for Beijing’s urgency is evident in public benchmarks. Stanford’s 2026 AI Index shows the gap between the best US and Chinese models at 2.7%, down from 17.5% to 31.6% percentage points in mid-2023. China leads global AI patent filings (69.7%), publications (23.2%), and industrial robot installations (nine times the US rate).
AI talent migration to the US has dropped by 89% since 2017, reflecting a narrowing capability gap and an increasing concentration of talent within China.
The passport policy comes at a cost. It’s an informal exit ban without judicial review, adding complexity for researchers and companies alike.