For China’s top AI researchers, the borders are rapidly 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 need to pursue government approval before heading abroad.
The restrictions shows a broader shift in how Beijing manages the brain-drain in the AI sector, which has seen skyrocketing requirement for talent to train and tweak AI models as the global tech industry taps into this latest avenue to pursue growth.
In March 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese authorities had been guiding top AI founders and researchers to prevent 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 seeks to have strengthen in the wake of Beijing narrowing its target on the Manus-Meta deal. China has barred Manus’ two co-founders from leaving the nation while its regulators investigate whether Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of the AI startup runs afoul of Beijing’s foreign investment rules, as per The Financial Times. The co-founders of Manus are now said to be exploring options to fulfill Beijing’s requirement to unwind the deal, including increasing 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 new index shows the performance gap between the top U.S. and Chinese models had decrease to just 2.7% as of March 2026, from about 31% in 2023, increasing 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, needing government sign-off before tech companies like Moonshot AI, StepFun, and ByteDance can accept American capital, per Bloomberg reported in April.
The news of travel restrictions follows a series of expanding economic countermeasures: in 2025, Beijing imposed two rounds of export controls on 14 rare earth materials critical to high-tech military production, and separately barred state-funded data centers from deploying foreign AI chips.
