Inside China’s grey market for banned US AI models: Transfer station economy expalned

By Zilan Qian Editor’s Note: This article was first published by ChinaTalk and is being cross-posted here with permission from the author. You can read the original version here: [ Link ] . The Transfer Station Economy, Explained On April 23, 2026, the White House released a memo warning that Chinese entities were running “industrial-scale” distillation campaigns against American frontier AI models, leveraging “tens of thousands of proxy accounts” to evade detection.