{"slug": "china-clears-deepseek-and-minimax-for-global-use-as-washington-weighs-a-ban", "title": "China Clears DeepSeek and MiniMax for Global Use as Washington Weighs a Ban", "summary": "A CCTV-affiliated social media account, Yuyuan Tantian, announced late Thursday that DeepSeek and MiniMax had completed registration and open-sourcing procedures authorizing overseas use, according to Reuters, as Beijing fast-tracks open-source model exports under a policy state media calls 即报即出. The clearance came a week after China's Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Science and Technology published an October 16 draft catalogue adding 23 AI technologies — including large models, autonomous agents and computing clusters — to prohibited or restricted export lists, with controls Reuters reported would cover models trained on sensitive data above 2 trillion parameters and a public comment period running through November 15. Washington is moving the opposite way on DeepSeek: the Department of Homeland Security barred federal agencies from acquiring DeepSeek products in an order posted for public inspection October 19 and set for Federal Register publication October 20, while Representatives Josh Gottheimer and Darin LaHood introduced the bipartisan No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act, and OpenAI told US officials DeepSeek is \"state-subsidized\" and \"state-controlled.", "body_md": "*A CCTV-linked account says Beijing has waved DeepSeek and MiniMax through for worldwide deployment, right as US lawmakers push the opposite move on DeepSeek.*\n\nYuyuan Tantian, a social media account affiliated with Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, announced late Thursday that DeepSeek and MiniMax had \"successfully completed the registration process, as well as the procedures for open-sourcing and authorising overseas use.\" That's according to a report from Reuters. The post framed the clearance as proof that China, not the United States, is the one actually letting AI move freely across borders.\n\nThat contrast is the point. One week before the announcement, on October 16, China's Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Science and Technology published a draft catalogue. It added 23 AI technologies, including large models, autonomous agents and computing clusters, to a list of exports that are prohibited or restricted. Reuters reported the controls would apply to models trained on sensitive data with more than 2 trillion parameters, a threshold that would sweep in systems like Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 and Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Max. The public comment period runs through November 15.\n\nOpen-source releases, though, are carved out entirely. Chinese regulators are fast-tracking them under a policy state media summarised as 即报即出: file the paperwork and the export goes out. State media has named DeepSeek and MiniMax as the first big names to clear that process for overseas use. Yuyuan Tantian's post didn't bury the geopolitics: it accused Washington of using targeted bans and technology blockades to protect its own AI industry's lead.\n\nWashington, for its part, is moving the other way on DeepSeek specifically. The Department of Homeland Security has already barred federal agencies from acquiring DeepSeek products. Representatives Josh Gottheimer and Darin LaHood have a bipartisan bill, the No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act, aimed at stripping the app off government hardware entirely. OpenAI has gone further, telling US officials that DeepSeek is \"state-subsidized\" and \"state-controlled\" and should be treated accordingly in any broader ban.\n\n[China opposes US DeepSeek ban as it drafts its own export controls](https://startupfortune.com/china-opposes-us-deepseek-ban-as-it-drafts-its-own-export-controls/)\n\nDHS posted the order for public inspection on October 19, with formal Federal Register publication set for October 20, and it blocks any third-party product built on DeepSeek's models from federal purchase. - [China opposes US DeepSeek ban and export controls](https://startupfortune.com/china-opposes-us-deepseek-ban-as-it-drafts-its-own-export-controls/) - [DeepSeek AI models removed from federal systems debate](https://startupfortune.com/china-opposes-us-deepseek-ban-as-it-drafts-its-own-export-controls/)\n\nSo the timing isn't a coincidence so much as a split screen. Beijing is telling the world its models are open for business at the exact moment a chunk of Washington is trying to wall one of them off entirely.\n\nHere's the part state media left out of the post: MiniMax doesn't even fully believe its own pitch. When the company open-sourced its H3 video model, it attached licensing terms that restrict free commercial access for users in the US, the EU, the UK and South Korea. Those are the exact markets where regulatory friction with China's AI sector is highest. That's not a blanket global release. It's a release everywhere except the places most likely to push back, which makes \"authorised for overseas use\" a much narrower claim than the CCTV framing suggests.\n\nDeepSeek doesn't have that problem in quite the same way, mostly because its models are already running in places Washington can't easily touch. Saudi Aramco installed DeepSeek in its main data center earlier this year, and banks including HSBC and Standard Chartered have been testing it internally. That adoption happened well before Thursday's registration announcement, and no US device ban will undo it.\n\nWhat actually changed this week isn't whether DeepSeek and MiniMax can be used abroad. They already were. What changed is the paper trail: Beijing now has an official, state-media-amplified record of having cleared them, one it can point to the next time it wants to argue that China's AI exports are rules-based and transparent while America's are political. Whether global enterprises buy that argument will depend less on the registration certificate than on whether DeepSeek's next data breach headline, or MiniMax's next quietly-added license restriction, undercuts it first.\n\n**Also read:** [Treasury proposes adding biotech to China investment restrictions under COINS Act](https://startupfortune.com/treasury-proposes-adding-biotech-to-china-investment-restrictions-under-coins-act/) • [Big banks start blocking AI agents from logging into customer accounts](https://startupfortune.com/big-banks-start-blocking-ai-agents-from-logging-into-customer-accounts/) • [With .science Packages, AIPOCH Open-Science Changes How People Hand Over and Build on Research](https://startupfortune.com/with-science-packages-aipoch-open-science-changes-how-people-hand-over-and-build-on-research/)\n\n*This article is posted in [AI News](https://startupfortune.com/category/ai/), check it out for more related stories.*\n\n## Join the discussion\n\n[Open in the community →](https://startupfortune.com/community/)\n\nAlmost there. Sign in and your reply posts straight away.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-clears-deepseek-and-minimax-for-global-use-as-washington-weighs-a-ban", "canonical_source": "https://startupfortune.com/china-clears-deepseek-and-minimax-for-global-use-as-washington-weighs-a-ban/", "published_at": "2026-10-23 17:43:51+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-23 18:14:19.637605+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy", "large-language-models", "ai-startups"], "entities": ["DeepSeek", "MiniMax", "Yuyuan Tantian", "CCTV", "Ministry of Commerce", "Ministry of Science and Technology", "Department of Homeland Security", "OpenAI"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-clears-deepseek-and-minimax-for-global-use-as-washington-weighs-a-ban", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-clears-deepseek-and-minimax-for-global-use-as-washington-weighs-a-ban.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-clears-deepseek-and-minimax-for-global-use-as-washington-weighs-a-ban.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-clears-deepseek-and-minimax-for-global-use-as-washington-weighs-a-ban.jsonld"}}