China bans AI companions that cultivate dependency, but sex robots seemingly sit outside the rules

China's latest AI companion regulation reads like a genuine attempt to address a real problem: platforms can no longer engineer emotional dependence into chatbots, minors are locked out of virtual intimate relationships, and long sessions now have to be interrupted with intervention triggers for self-harm signals. What it seemingly doesn't touch is physical hardware, which is a strange gap given how much of the global sex robot supply chain runs through Chinese manufacturing. Enforcing any of this also means someone, somewhere, is reading the emotional content of private conversations, which is its own quiet trade-off worth paying attention to.