AMD CEO Lisa Su met Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on 18 May 2026, pledging to expand AMD’s operations and investment in China. The meeting came two days after Trump’s state visit and highlights the delicate position US chipmakers occupy as export controls reshape the semiconductor trade.TL;DR
AMD CEO Lisa Su sat down with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Monday, a meeting that underscores how US chipmakers are scrambling to protect their foothold in the world’s second-largest semiconductor market even as Washington tightens the screws on technology exports.
He, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party’s Central Committee and China’s most senior official for economic and trade affairs, welcomed multinationals including AMD to “seize China’s development opportunities and deepen mutually beneficial cooperation.” He also referenced last week’s summit between President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump, saying the two leaders had “reached a series of important consensuses” and that trade teams from both sides achieved “overall balanced and positive outcomes.”
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Su, for her part, said AMD is willing to keep expanding its operations in China and increase investment in the country. The message was carefully calibrated: warm enough to reassure Beijing, vague enough to avoid provoking Washington.
The meeting took place just two days after Trump wrapped up his state visit to China, a trip that produced trade concessions but left the semiconductor export-control regime largely untouched. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer confirmed that chip export controls were not a major topic during the bilateral talks, a signal that Washington has no intention of relaxing restrictions any time soon.
For AMD, those restrictions have reshaped its China strategy. The company has been forced to develop modified, less powerful chips specifically for the Chinese market, a costly but necessary workaround. Its MI308 accelerator can be sold to China without special approval, while the more advanced MI325X was moved from a presumption of denial to a case-by-case review process in January 2026, giving AMD a narrow path to supply higher-end hardware to Chinese buyers.
The broader US approach remains a patchwork of carrots and sticks. Washington cleared roughly 10 Chinese companies to buy Nvidia’s H200 processors, but no chips have actually shipped yet. Meanwhile, Congress is pushing the MATCH Act, formally the Multilateral Alignment of Technology Controls on Hardware Act, which would tighten controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment by binding Japan and the Netherlands to a 150-day deadline for aligning their export restrictions with American rules. Beijing sharpened its criticism of US legislation in the run-up to the summit, calling such measures counterproductive.
If the diplomatic choreography in the Great Hall was designed to project cooperation, events earlier in the week told a different story. Just two days before Trump arrived in Beijing, state broadcaster CCTV aired footage of Huawei’s secret chip lab on prime-time TV, a pointed reminder that China is building its own semiconductor capabilities regardless of what Washington decides. The broadcast was widely interpreted as a negotiating tactic, showing the US that its leverage has limits.
That context makes Su’s visit all the more significant. AMD, like Nvidia and Intel, faces a strategic dilemma: retreat from China and cede the market to domestic competitors like Huawei, or stay engaged and navigate an increasingly unpredictable regulatory environment. Su’s decision to meet He in person suggests AMD is choosing the latter, at least for now.
China remains a critical revenue source for AMD. The company’s data-centre business, which has been its fastest-growing segment, depends partly on sales to Chinese cloud providers and research institutions. Walking away from that market would leave billions of dollars on the table and hand a strategic advantage to Huawei, which is rapidly closing the performance gap with its homegrown Ascend accelerators.
At the same time, AMD cannot afford to antagonise Washington. The company is building a gigawatt-scale data centre for OpenAI, scheduled for the second half of 2026, a project that cements its position in the American AI ecosystem. Any perception that AMD is helping China leapfrog US technology could jeopardise that relationship and invite regulatory blowback.
Su’s balancing act in Beijing reflects the impossible position that American chipmakers now occupy. They need China’s market to fund the research and development that keeps them ahead of Chinese rivals, but the rules governing what they can sell there change with each new executive order and congressional bill. The meeting at the Great Hall of the People was, in that sense, less a breakthrough than a holding action, a signal that AMD intends to stay in the game while the rules are still being written.
Whether that strategy pays off depends on forces well beyond Su’s control: the trajectory of US-China relations, the pace of Huawei’s progress, and the willingness of regulators in Washington, Tokyo, and The Hague to keep granting exceptions. For now, the handshake in Beijing buys AMD time. How much time remains an open question.
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