Xi Jinping opened the World AI Conference in Shanghai on Thursday by unveiling the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, a 29-nation intergovernmental body whose founding agreement was signed the day before, on July 16. In the same address, he pledged 5,000 AI training and seminar places for developing countries over five years, and expanded access to MAZU, China’s AI-powered meteorological warning system, to 30 nations. Xinhua’s account has Xi calling the launch “an important milestone in the history of AI development.”

The framing is a coalition play. WAICO’s founding roster, per Al Jazeera, includes Indonesia, Brazil, Malaysia, South Africa, Senegal, Russia and Pakistan, alongside heads of state present in Shanghai including Kazakhstan’s Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Thailand’s Anutin Charnvirakul and Cambodia’s Hun Manet. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also attended. Application-cooperation centres are being wired into ASEAN, the African Union, the League of Arab States, CELAC, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS. The pitch, from Beijing to the Global South, is that AI rule-making shouldn’t be someone else’s project.

Reuters casts the initiative as a direct counterweight to Washington’s “Pax Silica” framework on AI and critical-mineral supply chains. The U.S. AI Opportunity Statement, per a person familiar with the U.S. position, has 35 signatories; Kazakhstan is the only country listed in both. That’s the map of the split.

Xi didn’t name the United States, but warned against “overstretching the national security concept in the field of AI, or placing one country’s security over that of others,” and insisted AI must remain “under human control.” He cited Chinese official figures putting core AI industries above 1.2 trillion yuan ($176.6 billion) in 2025 across more than 6,200 enterprises. First government-level AI talks between Washington and the Trump administration’s counterparts in Beijing are expected in the coming weeks. WAICO is the terrain those talks will now cross.

Sources