China’s Xi Jinping used Shanghai’s World Artificial Intelligence Conference to call for international rules on AI and to criticize what he termed the “overstretching” of national-security justifications for technology restrictions—an implicit swipe at U.S. export controls. Beijing unveiled a new World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization with 29 partner countries, positioning it as a counterweight to Washington’s “Pax Silica” framework with U.S. allies. Xi pledged AI training for 5,000 participants from developing nations and promised access to a Chinese early-warning meteorological tool for 30 countries, reinforcing Beijing’s courtship of the Global South.
The forum doubled as a showcase of China’s push for self-reliance. Huawei promoted its Atlas 950 SuperPoD system, while local champions rolled out ever-larger open-source models, including Moonshot’s Kimi K3 and Zhipu’s GLM-5.2, underscoring a strategy to compete on affordability and openness against largely closed U.S. systems. U.S. officials and companies have accused some Chinese developers of illicit model “distillation,” allegations Beijing rejects. The announcements highlight a deepening bifurcation of the AI ecosystem: U.S. curbs are squeezing access to top-tier chips, but China is accelerating homegrown compute and open-source software to mitigate the gap—setting the stage for expanded regulatory and standards competition alongside commercial rivalry.
Xi urges global AI governance, rebukes U.S. tech curbs
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