China is increasingly keeping its best AI talent to itself

For China’s top AI researchers, the borders are quickly closing. Researchers, startup founders, and executives at private firms are now reportedly 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 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 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.

Restrictions appear to have intensified in the wake of Beijing narrowing its focus on the Manus-Meta deal. 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. The co-founders of Manus are now said to be exploring options 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 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% 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, Bloomberg reported 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 critical to high-tech military manufacturing, and separately barred state-funded data centers from deploying foreign AI chips.

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