Chinese state media rebuff allegations linking Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to Chinese spy

Chinese state media have pushed back against allegations that the extramarital affair partner of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was linked to Chinese intelligence, calling the claims a "political witch hunt" driven by American political interests.

China's state-run Global Times published a commentary Tuesday headlined "Is the investigation into Jensen Huang counterintelligence or a political witch hunt?" criticizing US media for framing Huang's alleged affair as a national security issue.

The Global Times questioned the basis for allegations that Alice Huang — known in Chinese as Huang Le — the woman identified as Huang's affair partner, had worked for Chinese intelligence, saying "relevant reports rely on anonymous sources and materials that even the media themselves cannot verify."

The paper also said US media had amplified claims from insiders as national security threats, with politicians joining in to render a verdict in the court of public opinion before any investigation had concluded.

The outlet pointed to political divisions within the United States as the backdrop for the episode. It noted that the Democratic Party's gains in both chambers of Congress in the midterm elections could make it easier to launch congressional investigations and summon Nvidia over its semiconductor business with China.

"Suspicion alone cannot produce the next-generation GPU," the Global Times said. "Excessive politicization that frames business activity as a security threat will not win the next AI race."

The Hunan Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party in Hunan Province, also weighed in with a commentary titled "Jensen Huang's affair, political strife and globalization," arguing the episode was being exploited in US domestic political battles.

"With political interests aligned around distracting from an election defeat and obstructing an improvement in US-China relations, the appearance of a Chinese woman in the private life of a US tech titan became the easiest material to work with," the paper said.

The Hunan Daily also cited Nvidia's longstanding push to ease semiconductor export restrictions on China, criticizing what it described as the use of the episode as a political pressure tool against US technology companies that do business with China.

"If spy labels can be applied at will, what suffers is not just the reputation of a particular company but the most basic commercial trust between nations," the paper said.

The controversy has also spread across Chinese social media. On Weibo, several related search terms trended in quick succession, including "US media portraying Jensen Huang's affair partner as a Chinese spy," "Jensen Huang's image as a devoted husband of 41 years shattered" and "The impact of Jensen Huang's affair on Nvidia."

Some users criticized what they described as a bias in US media that links Chinese businesspeople to espionage. Others questioned whether a genuine intelligence operation would have been conducted so openly, given that the two were seen together in public.

Experts are watching whether the episode could lead to tighter US semiconductor restrictions on China.

Li Mingjang, an associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, told Lianhe Zaobao the case "could give US China hawks a pretext to push for tighter export controls."

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs had earlier rebuffed questions about the spy allegations surrounding Huang at its regular briefing Monday, calling them "baseless speculation and a smear against China."