Xi Jinping spearheads China’s AI push
A new body is set to strengthen Beijing’s influence over international standard-setting
President Xi Jinping has opened China’s flagship artificial intelligence conference as he seeks to turn the country’s rapidly advancing AI capabilities into geopolitical power.
Xi is presiding over the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, a day after China and nearly 30 countries including Russia, Brazil and Indonesia signed up to a new organisation to be based in the Chinese financial capital.
The body, to be known as the World AI Cooperation Organization, will give China influence over international standard-setting and other issues as its AI models increasingly compete with their US rivals for global influence.
The move comes as China is increasingly adding artificial intelligence to its suite of diplomatic offerings to other countries, especially developing nations from the so-called global South that it is seeking to draw closer into its economic orbit.
In a meeting on Thursday with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who is visiting Shanghai for the AI Conference, Xi said: “China is willing to share digital economy and artificial intelligence technologies to help Kazakhstan achieve digital transformation.”
A commentary published in state newspaper People’s Daily this week said that “the risks and challenges brought about by AI are becoming increasingly prominent, making the need for strengthened governance more urgent than ever”.
World AI Cooperation Organisation members will be hoping that by aligning with China, they can receive some of the benefits of its growing technological prowess, analysts said.
“Indonesia also expected that its participation in WAICO would boost investments in the high-technology industry sector to help Indonesia transform its economy,” said Indonesia’s state-owned Antara news agency ahead of the signing.
China’s challenge to US global leadership on AI comes as its start-ups are releasing increasingly powerful state of the art models, narrowing the gap between the two countries.
Chinese AI start-up Moonshot, for example, has released a large language model with capabilities approaching those of frontier US labs, such as Anthropic.
Western companies from the US to Europe are also switching to cheaper Chinese models.
DoorDash, Siemens and Airbnb are among the groups that have adopted AI tools built in China, drawn by models that are cheaper, increasingly capable and, in some cases, easier to run on their own infrastructure.
The shift has been driven largely by cost but in Europe, the Trump administration’s move last month to impose export controls on Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable models forced businesses to confront the risks of depending on US technology.