--- date: 2026-10-21 subject: "DeepSeek open-sources serving code | MOFCOM hits back on sanctions and AI procurement ban | China defends curbs as Japan's yttrium runs low" --- **DeepSeek published DeepInfer source code on GitHub** under a license permitting commercial use; the serving framework's Nvidia and Huawei Ascend 950 versions share one code tree, able to switch between chip types. **China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) warned of a response** yesterday unless Washington corrects Monday's sanctions on five entities tied to startup Shanghai Zhisuan Technology and its investor MiraclePlus over alleged theft of Google AI trade secrets. **MOFCOM declared China would take countermeasures** in response to a U.S. ban on Chinese AI products from federal purchasing. **China’s Foreign Ministry imposed new rare earth export controls on Japan** to counter the country's shift toward "remilitarization." # Top Stories - **DeepSeek open-sources its AI serving software, with Huawei Ascend and Nvidia support** — DeepSeek published on GitHub the source code of DeepInfer, the inference framework that runs its V4.1 Flash model to answer users' requests, under a license permitting commercial use. DeepInfer's Nvidia and Huawei Ascend 950 versions share one code tree and switch with a single setting, TMTPost reports, so a company serving the model can run it on Huawei's chips as well as Nvidia's. The company says one DeepInfer cluster serves 155 trillion tokens, the word fragments a model reads and writes, each day. Stored results of earlier processing supply 96% of the input. The open-source release covers offline inference only, and DeepSeek has not fully released code for its cache-management and load-balancing components, saying they are tied too closely to internal infrastructure. [36Kr](https://www.36kr.com/p/4034109983036552) [TMTPost](https://www.tmtpost.com/8175996.html) - **China's trade ministry warns of response to U.S. trade secret sanctions on AI startup and investor** — China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), which runs trade policy, said yesterday that China will take necessary measures to respond unless Washington corrects Monday's sanctions on five Chinese entities over alleged trade secret theft. The sanctions reach past startup Shanghai Zhisuan Technology to entities tied to its investor, the accelerator MiraclePlus, which Huxiu says is the first time such sanctions have reached an investor. The State Department says Zhisuan founder Ding Linwei stole Google's AI supercomputing trade secrets while working there. It also says MiraclePlus gave Zhisuan seed funding, a round Huxiu puts at 5.026 million yuan ($750,000). MiraclePlus denies investing in Zhisuan, though a California federal court docket contains an investment agreement between Ding and MiraclePlus concerning Zhisuan. [China Military Online](http://www.81.cn/fyr/16494972.html) [govt] [Huxiu](https://www.huxiu.com/article/4899261.html) - **China's trade ministry vows countermeasures over U.S. federal ban on Chinese AI products** — China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), which runs trade policy, said yesterday that China will take all necessary measures against any action that substantively harms its interests. It came following the foreign ministry pledge CTD reported [Oct. 20](https://chinatechdaily.org/archive/china-daily/2026-10-20/) against U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) orders that exclude Chinese companies' products from federal purchasing. The ministry administers China's trade countermeasures, so the statement adds a retaliation threat to Beijing's response. It also urges Washington to use the China-U.S. AI dialogue mechanism to build trust and manage differences. A spokesperson said Washington had "disregarded the important consensus reached by the two heads of state." [China Military Online](http://www.81.cn/fyr/16494973.html) [govt] - **China says its export controls on Japan target "remilitarization" as Japan's yttrium runs low** — Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said that China's export controls on Japan are lawful and aim to stop Japan's "remilitarization" and nuclear ambitions, answering a question about Japan's yttrium supply. Japan could exhaust its stockpiles of yttrium, a rare earth metal, within months, disrupting automotive, aerospace and semiconductor production, per the Financial Times, and Tokyo has asked Washington and major U.S. companies for help. Yttrium goes into heat-resistant coatings for jet engines and semiconductor equipment, and its price outside China has risen 179-fold over two years, according to Anadolu Agency. Beijing tightened curbs on shipments to Japan in January and again in February, after a dispute over Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's November 2025 remarks on Taiwan. [The Paper](https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_34299680) [state-affiliated] [Anadolu Agency](https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/china-defends-rare-earth-export-curbs-on-japan-citing-remilitarization-concerns/4095515) [state media] [The Standard](https://www.thestandard.com.hk/china/article/346076/China-defends-yttrium-export-controls-on-Japan-citing-remilitarization-concerns) # Policy & Regulation - **China's industry ministry says it will cautiously advance self-driving car pilots** — Vice Minister Xin Guobin said today that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), which approves vehicles for sale, will cautiously advance market access and on-road pilots for self-driving cars. Those pilots are the route by which carmakers win approval to sell Level 3 (L3) cars, which drive themselves under defined conditions while the driver stands ready to take over when asked. About 61 million passenger cars in China carried combined driver-assistance functions by the end of August, according to an MIIT department head, and about 15 million could follow a navigation route under driver supervision. China's first mandatory national safety standard for L3 and higher-level L4 systems, issued in August, takes effect July 1, 2027. [ITHome](https://www.ithome.com/1/015/909.htm) [ITHome](https://www.ithome.com/1/015/852.htm) - **Six Chinese government bodies name 136 projects for real-world trials of new technology** — China's economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), and five other agencies named 136 "application scenario" projects that open real sites such as mines to trials of new technology. The list gives companies with unproven technologies, including private and small firms, named sites in which to test them. Smart mine projects alone will open more than 2,800 mines to trials of driverless vehicles, cloud computing and intelligent sensing, NDRC spokesperson Li Chao said. NDRC said it will turn what the projects produce into operating guides and management standards so the scenarios can be extended more widely. [Science and Technology Daily](https://epaper.stdaily.com/statics/technology-site/index.html#/home?isDetail=1¤tNewsId=5f401f1c74294915b4522c6eb28dcacf¤tVersionName=02%C2%B7%E7%AC%AC02%E7%89%88%EF%BC%9A%E8%A6%81%20%E9%97%BB¤tVersion=2&timeValue=2026-10-21) [state media] # Digital Infrastructure - **China launches first satellite of low-inclination imaging constellation billed as world's first** — A Ceres-1 rocket launched from a ship off Shandong put Xiguang-4 01 into orbit, the first satellite of Wuyang, which TMTPost reports is billed as the world's first low-inclination Earth-imaging constellation. Most imaging satellites fly near-polar orbits that pass over low latitudes least often, so Wuyang's 39-degree orbit lets it revisit southern China and other low-latitude regions more frequently. Led by Guangzhou University and built by XIOPM Space, the satellite carries a camera with 0.5-meter resolution, sharp enough to pick out individual cars. Once networked, the constellation is to cover 15 southern Chinese provinces and low-latitude parts of Southeast Asia, Africa and South America. [TMTPost](https://www.tmtpost.com/8176418.html) # Strategic Context - **Shanghai's hard X-ray laser facility SHINE produces its first laser beam** — SHINE, a hard X-ray free-electron laser under construction in Shanghai, has achieved first lasing, producing its beam for the first time, ShanghaiTech University told state broadcaster CCTV. Lasing shows that the facility's accelerator and magnet chain work together, the core of a machine built to fire up to a million X-ray pulses a second for imaging atoms and molecules as they move. The milestone came with a 4-billion-electron-volt electron beam, half the energy planned for the finished machine. The beam was driven through rows of alternating magnets that make the electrons wiggle and emit X-rays. ShanghaiTech leads the project, the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Shanghai Advanced Research Institute built the accelerator and magnet arrays, and SHINE is due to open by the end of 2027. [Global Times](https://china.huanqiu.com/article/4ThYbisxSap) [state media] - **China launches central state company to develop national data resources** — National Data Group, a new central state-owned enterprise whose main business is developing and using data resources, was unveiled yesterday in Xiong'an New Area, Hebei, by Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang. The group handles market operations while the National Data Administration, set up in 2023, writes data rules and policy, according to Zhang Xianghong, a member of a national data expert advisory committee. Ding, who sits on the Communist Party's top leadership body, said the Party Central Committee formed the group for "seizing the initiative in AI development." At least nine provincial-level governments, including Beijing, Shanghai and Fujian, already run their own data groups, and Fujian's has 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) in registered capital. [Science and Technology Daily](https://epaper.stdaily.com/statics/technology-site/index.html#/home?isDetail=1¤tNewsId=390c523e0e114a17ad81a99525f12240¤tVersionName=01%C2%B7%E7%AC%AC01%E7%89%88%EF%BC%9A%E4%BB%8A%E6%97%A5%E8%A6%81%E9%97%BB¤tVersion=1&timeValue=2026-10-21) [state media] [Sina Tech](https://finance.sina.com.cn/roll/2026-10-20/doc-inivwpzm6482518.shtml) [state-affiliated]