China is increasingly keeping its best AI talent to itself

China has expanded travel restrictions to include top AI researchers and executives at private firms, requiring government approval before they can leave the country. The measures, which intensified after Beijing blocked Meta's $2 billion acquisition of AI startup Manus, aim to prevent a brain drain of talent critical to national security and economic competitiveness. The restrictions come as the performance gap between U.S. and Chinese AI models has narrowed to just 2.7%, raising questions about America's ability to maintain its lead.

For China’s top AI researchers, the borders are quickly closing. Researchers, startup founders and executives at private firms are now reportedly https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-26/china-expands-travel-curbs-to-top-ai-talent-at-private-firms subject to travel restrictions, with some of the industry’s most prominent figures required to seek government approval before heading abroad. The restrictions reflect a wider shift in how Beijing manages the brain-drain in the AI sector, which has seen skyrocketing demand for talent https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/27/meta-is-offering-multimillion-dollar-pay-for-ai-researchers-but-not-100m-signing-bonuses/ to train and tweak AI models as the global tech industry taps into this new avenue to seek growth. In March 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-ai-us-travel-advisory-ff248349 that Chinese authorities had been advising top AI founders and researchers to avoid traveling to the U.S., an early signal of just how closely Beijing has come to guard AI as both an economic asset and a national security priority https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/28/china-meta-manus-ai-deal.html . Restrictions appear to have intensified in the wake of Beijing narrowing its focus on the Manus-Meta deal https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/27/china-vetoes-metas-2b-manus-deal-after-months-long-probe/ . China has barred Manus’ two co-founders from leaving the country while its regulators investigate whether Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of the AI startup runs afoul of Beijing’s foreign investment rules, according to The Financial Times https://www.ft.com/content/d9123d9d-c807-41d6-8a17-80ff1111834a?syn-25a6b1a6=1 . The co-founders of Manus are now said to be exploring options https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-21/manus-weighs-raising-1-billion-to-unwind-meta-takeover to fulfill Beijing’s demand to unwind the deal, including raising about $1 billion from external investors to buy back the company from the social media giant. The AI race between the East and the West is closer than it’s ever been. Stanford’s latest index https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-report/technical-performance shows the performance gap between the top U.S. and Chinese models had shrunk to just 2.7% as of March 2026, from about 31% https://www.humai.blog/stanfords-2026-ai-index-the-us-leads-china-by-2-7-here-is-what-that-number-actually-means/ in 2023, raising fresh questions about how long America can hold its lead. The U.S. still dominates in terms of model quality and high-impact patents, but China is fast catching up if not outpacing American AI labs, in publications, citations and patent volume. In addition to travel restrictions, China reportedly plans to keep a check on U.S. capital flowing into its top AI firms, requiring government sign-off before tech companies like Moonshot AI, StepFun, and ByteDance can accept American capital, per Bloomberg reported https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-24/china-to-curb-us-investment-in-tech-companies-after-meta-deal in April. The news of travel restrictions follows a series of escalating economic countermeasures: in 2025, Beijing imposed two rounds of export controls on 14 rare earth materials https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/10/china-tightens-export-controls-on-rare-earth-metals-why-this-matters critical to high-tech military manufacturing, and separately barred state-funded data centers https://www.aol.com/articles/exclusive-china-bans-foreign-ai-090709029.html?guccounter=1 from deploying foreign AI chips.