China's President Xi Jinping sought a more robust effort to pool nationwide resources to advance critical technologies amid rising tensions with the U.S. during a Communist Party meeting, Bloomberg reports.

Xi urged China to "pool resources to accomplish competitive advantages in specific sectors to win strategic initiative opportunities. China prioritized research of technologies that have a first-mover advantage or can guide future development.

Tsinghua University spent over $0.4 million last October on two Nvidia AI supercomputers, each powered by four A100 chips. The Institute of Computing Technology spent around $0.25 million on A100 chips.

The school of artificial intelligence at a CAS university in July spent $0.2 million on high-tech equipment, including a server partly powered by A100 chips.

In November, the cybersecurity college of Guangdong-based Jinan University spent over $0.09 million on an Nvidia AI supercomputer, while its school of intelligent systems science and engineering spent almost $0.1 million on eight A100 chips.

The U.S. Chips Act barred companies vying for funding from materially expanding production of chips more advanced than 28-nm in China for ten years. 

The U.S. restricted China's leading chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, access to ASML Holding NV's (NASDAQ:ASML) cutting-edge ultraviolet lithography systems. 

The U.S. weighed restricting access of its chipmaking equipment to memory chip makers in China, including Yangtze Memory Technologies Co Ltd.

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