China is increasingly keeping its best AI talent for itself

For China’s top AI researchers, the borders are closing fast. Researchers, startup founders and executives at private companies are now said to be 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 broader shift in how Beijing manages the brain drain in the AI ​​sector, which has seen a growing demand for talent to train and tweak AI models as the global technology industry exploits this new avenue for growth.

In March 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese authorities advised top AI founders and researchers to avoid traveling to the United States, an early sign of how close Beijing is to protecting AI as an economic asset and national security priority.

The restrictions appear to have intensified following Beijing’s narrowing of its focus on the Manus-Meta deal. China has barred Manus’ co-founders from leaving the country while regulators investigate whether Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of the AI ​​startup contravenes Beijing’s foreign investment rules, according to the Financial Times. Manus’ co-founders are now said to be exploring options to meet Beijing’s demand to terminate the deal, including raising about $1 billion from outside investors to buy back the company from the social media giant.

The AI ​​race between East and West is closer than ever. The latest Stanford index shows that the performance gap between the top American and Chinese models narrowed to just 2.7% as of March 2026, from about 31% in 2023, raising new questions about how long America can maintain the lead.

The United States still dominates in terms of quality of models and high-impact patents, but China is quickly catching up to, if not surpassing, American AI labs in publications, citations, and patent volume.

In addition to the travel restrictions, China reportedly plans to monitor the flow of U.S. capital to its largest AI companies, requiring government approval before tech companies like Moonshot AI, StepFun, and ByteDance can accept U.S. capital, Bloomberg reported in April.

News of the travel restrictions comes on the heels of 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 banned state-funded data centers from deploying foreign AI chips.