Local AI by Region
Local AI in China
China · CN · CNY · Restricted access to NVIDIA, strong domestic
Hardware pricing in China
NVIDIA GPUs restricted by export controls. Domestic alternatives dominate: Ascend, Moore Threads, Cambricon, Iluvatar. Used 3090s ~CNY 4,000-5,000 where available.
Our note on this market reads: Restricted access to NVIDIA, strong domestic. Where supply is restricted, the used 24GB cards that anchor local AI elsewhere may simply not be purchasable, and the practical build is whatever is domestically available or already in the country.
| GPU | Used 2026 | New 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| RTX 3090 (24GB) | ~CNY 5,040 | Rare new |
| RTX 4090 (24GB) | ~CNY 11,520 | ~CNY 14,400 |
| Mac Studio M4 Max (36GB) | — | ~CNY 17,280 |
Converted from US dollar reference prices at approximate mid-2026 rates (CNY 7.2 to the dollar), then cross-checked against the local note above. Import duty, VAT and shipping are not included and are the largest source of error in several markets. Mac Studios typically have a single uniform global price.
Models trained for China
The catalogue records 8 models with training or evaluation specific to China or its languages. These are the entries worth trying before falling back to a general multilingual model:
- Qwen
- DeepSeek
- GLM
- InternLM
- Yi
- Baichuan
- MiniMax
- Kimi
Recommended setup for China
For most users in China, we recommend starting with a used RTX 3090 (24GB) at CNY 5,040, or a Mac Studio with M4 Max (36GB) at CNY 17,280 new. The full reasoning is in the hardware requirements guide and the RTX 3090 value writeup.