China has expanded travel restrictions on high-level officials in the AI and semiconductor industries to include their spouses and children, requiring approval from Beijing for overseas travel, even for short durations. The government plans to gradually add more individuals to the list. These measures extend existing travel restrictions imposed since the beginning of the year on key private sector AI specialists from companies such as Alibaba and DeepSeek. The rules aim to prevent the transfer of key skills and information to the United States. Clément Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, stated in August that China dominates the field of open-weight AI models and could surpass American leading laboratories by the end of the year. He noted that China's culture of openness and knowledge sharing is driving these advancements, warning that American developers risk falling behind because they operate in isolation. American model creators, on the other hand, "work in silos" and risk falling behind, he added. A new report revealed that China now requires families of certain senior officials in the AI and semiconductor sectors to obtain approval from Beijing before traveling abroad. This rule applies to spouses and children, even for short stays. Government agencies have begun informing affected individuals of these expanded restrictions. Among those targeted are founders of top-tier startups and leaders of strategically important AI companies whose work is considered vital to state security by Beijing. Several individuals have already been informed that they must obtain approval for their family's travel. It is unclear whether the families of all individuals already subject to these restrictions must comply with this new rule. Beijing has long restricted the travel of researchers, nuclear scientists, and state-owned enterprise leaders, as well as their families. The new target is the private sector, where much of China's top AI talent has emerged since the launch of ChatGPT. Additionally, rules regarding the application of travel bans took effect on September 15. They cover cases ranging from criminal investigations to potential threats to China's industrial and technological security. Concerns among officials about losing technology and talent have increased after Meta's $2 billion acquisition of Manus. Beijing ordered the cancellation of this transaction and took measures to limit American investments in sensitive technology companies. This travel restriction measure is not necessarily related to Manus. According to a study, there are now more elite AI researchers working in China than in the United States. However, Chinese open-source AI models have significantly expanded their global presence, with their adoption rate rising from 13% to nearly 30% of total usage by 2025, primarily due to Qwen and DeepSeek. This trend has been documented in the State of AI report by OpenRouter, which analyzed over 100,000 billion tokens across more than 300 models, revealing the shift from proprietary dominance to a pluralistic and open-source competition on a global scale.