China has launched its most ambitious effort yet to shape the future of artificial intelligence, and the question is whether this is the push that finally puts Beijing ahead of Washington on the international stage.
On July 16, Xi Jinping delivered the keynote address at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, his first in-person appearance at the event since 2018. The centerpiece was the formal establishment of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, or WAICO, headquartered in Shanghai with 29 founding signatory countries.
The list of signatories tells the story. The members are largely from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, Algeria, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Laos, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, and others. No G7 nation signed on. No major Western democracy. This is not an attempt to bring the US and its allies into the same room. It is an attempt to build a parallel table where China sets the rules.
Xi framed WAICO as an answer to the aspirations of the Global South. “A major move by China to answer the call of the Global South and unite the international community together to vigorously promote AI development and governance,” he called it. He pledged 5,000 AI training opportunities for developing countries over five years, AI cooperation centers with ASEAN, the African Union, the Arab League, and other regional bodies, and the offer of China’s AI-powered meteorological warning system MAZU to 30 countries.
The strategic logic is clear. These initiatives go beyond development assistance. They create channels through which Chinese technologies, regulatory approaches, and standards become embedded within partner countries’ AI ecosystems. Open-source AI models, Xi reiterated support for open development, may be framed as democratization, but they also encourage adoption of Chinese models. Coinciding with Xi’s remarks, Moonshot AI released its latest open-source model, Kimi K3, claiming performance comparable to leading models from OpenAI and Anthropic.
The leverage here is bigger than it looks at first sight. AI governance now has two competing tables. The US and its allies are building regulatory frameworks and export-control regimes. China is building parallel infrastructure and governance bodies aimed at everyone else. Countries in the middle, especially in the developing world, will increasingly need to pick a lane.
WAICO does not need to supplant Western-led AI forums to succeed. It just needs to become a significant enough venue that its norms and standards carry weight. As one analyst noted, “Institutions matter not simply because of the ideas they espouse, but because of the mechanisms through which they diffuse tools and shape norms.”
China’s approach carries risks. Its domestic AI and digital governance has consistently normalized digital authoritarian practices, surveillance, censorship, state control. WAICO risks enshrining state-centric AI governance that places governments rather than human rights safeguards at the center. The language of “true multilateralism” and “shared future in cyberspace” can obscure the export of repressive digital infrastructure.
But for the countries signing up, the appeal is real. Western AI development is concentrated in a handful of companies in Silicon Valley and a few other hubs. China is offering access, infrastructure, and training, not just promises. For governments that feel left out of Western-led AI frameworks, WAICO looks like a genuine alternative.
Is this the push that puts China ahead of the US? Not yet. The US still leads in cutting-edge AI research, computing power, and the world’s most advanced AI companies. But governance is a different game. If WAICO becomes the default AI forum for the majority of the world’s population, the developing nations that make up most of humanity, then China will have achieved something the US has not: setting the rules for how most of the world uses AI.