China Rejects Claims It Used a Spy to Target Nvidia's Jensen Huang

Asked about the claims at a regular briefing, spokesperson Guo Jiakun said "the so-called claim of 'Chinese spies' is completely groundless and is nothing but a smear against China," according to the state-run Global Times. The Associated Press quoted him as calling the allegation "unsubstantiated". Beijing had already rejected the reporting before Monday's briefing, the AP said.

The statement is Beijing's first response since Nvidia's board said on Sunday that it was opening an independent investigation. It does not touch the questions that matter most to investors and to Washington: whether Huang knew of any intelligence effort, and whether information about the company or about US chip export policy reached China. The inquiry is under way days before Nvidia reports quarterly results.

The allegations began with The New York Times. It reported that Huang had told Nvidia's board he had been intimate with a business executive whom US intelligence had determined was gathering information for Beijing. Huang did not name the person. The Times named her as Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen who ran a company facing claims that it smuggled advanced chips into China, and said she was a spy for Beijing. The Financial Times has also reported on the relationship.

The case matters because of Huang's role in the fight over chip sales to China. He has faced questions over whether he pushed sales of advanced processors there despite US restrictions. This year he lobbied President Donald Trump to allow sales of Nvidia's H200 chip, although it is not clear whether Beijing will let Chinese companies buy it in large numbers, the AP noted. He had earlier lobbied for the H20, a less advanced part Nvidia designed for the Chinese market to comply with US export rules.

George Chen of The Asia Group, a Washington consultancy, told the AP that the central issues were whether Huang knew of any espionage and whether sensitive information had been compromised. He said those questions "require evidence rather than speculation."

Inside China, media coverage concentrated mainly on Huang's admission of an affair, and state outlets largely repeated the government's position, according to the AP. Some commentary suggested the reports were meant to unsettle relations between Washington and Beijing. The Global Times wrote that when relations begin to improve, "there are often those firing shots from the shadows."

The allegations also reach the White House. Trump said on Sunday that he would still take Huang with him to Asia. He also told reporters he expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen on November 18-19.