AI NewsChina is increasingly keeping its best AI talent to itself

China is increasingly keeping its best AI talent to itself

11:06 PM IST · May 27, 2026

For China’s top AI researchers, the borders are quickly closing. Researchers, startup founders and executives at private firms are nowreportedlysubject 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 seenskyrocketing demand for talentto train and tweak AI models as the global tech industry taps into this new avenue to seek growth. In March 2025, the Wall Street Journalreportedthat 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 anational security priority. Restrictions appear to have intensified in the wake of Beijing narrowing its focus onthe 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 toThe Financial Times. The co-founders of Manus are now said to beexploring optionsto 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 indexshows the performance gap between the top U.S. and Chinese models had shrunk to just 2.7% as of March 2026, from about31%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, perBloomberg reportedin April. The news of travel restrictions follows a series of escalating economic countermeasures: in 2025, Beijing imposedtwo rounds of export controls on 14 rare earth materialscritical to high-tech military manufacturing, and separately barredstate-funded data centersfrom deploying foreign AI chips.