Xi Jinping formally launched the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization on Friday at the 2026 World AI Conference in Shanghai, where the new intergovernmental body will also be headquartered. Its founding agreement, signed a day earlier by 29 states, is being framed by Beijing as an alternative architecture for global AI governance, one built without any G7 nation at the table.

The roster tells the story. Reuters reports the founding members include Russia, Belarus, Serbia, Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa, Senegal and Pakistan, distributed across 10 African and 12 Asian countries. The United States hasn’t joined. Neither has any other G7 economy. According to a Chinese foreign ministry readout, WAICO is “a major move by China to answer the call of the Global South.”

Xi, per Xinhua, called for a “just and equitable system for global AI governance” and said AI development “should not be a solo performance by a single country.” The subtext is legible enough. U.S. export controls continue to restrict Chinese access to advanced semiconductors and frontier models, and Beijing’s response is institutional: build the venue, host the secretariat, write the charter.

The staging reinforced it. UN Secretary-General António Guterres attended the signing ceremony. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet and Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul spoke at the opening. Xinhua pegs China’s core AI industries at more than 1.2 trillion yuan, roughly $176.6 billion, in 2025, and Beijing is pitching open-source AI as a public good.

Friday marked Xi’s first in-person appearance at the conference since its 2018 founding. That detail matters. The Chinese president shows up when a forum stops being a trade fair and starts being a bloc.

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