Chinese President Xi Jinping is making a bigger play for global influence in artificial intelligence. Speaking at China’s flagship AI conference on Friday, Xi cast Beijing as a long-term technology partner for developing nations, promising new training programs, broader international cooperation, and a more open approach to AI at a time when Washington continues tightening restrictions on China’s access to advanced chips and AI technologies.
The remarks came during the opening of the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), China’s largest annual AI event, in Shanghai. Xi’s decision to attend in person underscored how central artificial intelligence has become to Beijing’s economic ambitions and foreign policy. His speech framed AI as a shared global opportunity rather than a technology that should be dominated by a handful of countries.
Xi announced that China will offer 5,000 AI training and seminar opportunities for participants from developing countries. He said Beijing plans to deepen AI cooperation with regional organizations including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the League of Arab States, and the African Union, extending China’s technology partnerships across the Global South.
China’s AI Strategy Combines Diplomacy, Infrastructure, and Homegrown Innovation
“China is willing to work with all parties to seize and address the opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence development with a more open attitude, more pragmatic actions, and a longer-term vision,” according to a Google translation of his speech in Mandarin.
Xi said AI development should not be a “solo performance” by a single country, but a “symphony of international cooperation,” and China was “ready to be more open, take more practical actions, and assume a more visionary perspective.”
President Xi Jinping attended the opening ceremony of the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference
His comments followed another milestone announced in Shanghai a day earlier. Representatives from 29 countries agreed to establish the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, or WAICO, which will be headquartered in the city, according to Chinese state media outlet Xinhua. The new organization reflects Beijing’s push to shape international AI governance and build institutions that could influence future global standards.
Xi devoted part of his speech to AI safety and governance, urging countries to strengthen risk awareness and keep artificial intelligence “secure and controllable,” adding that AI should “always remain under human control.” He called on governments to oppose “overstretching the national security concept in the field of AI, or placing one country’s security over that of others.”
China’s AI Push Gains Momentum Despite U.S. Restrictions
The remarks landed against the backdrop of an increasingly divided global AI landscape. Washington has spent several years tightening export controls to limit China’s access to advanced semiconductors and high-performance AI hardware. The restrictions began during President Donald Trump’s first administration, which placed Huawei on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Entity List in 2019. The Biden administration later broadened those measures with export controls introduced in 2022, citing national security concerns over advanced computing chips and semiconductor manufacturing technology.
Xi’s remarks coincided with another sign of China’s AI momentum. On Thursday, July 16, Chinese startup Moonshot AI unveiled Kimi K3, its latest flagship large language model. The model rose to the top of Arena.ai’s Frontend Code Arena leaderboard, outperforming Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 on a benchmark widely followed by developers for real-world frontend engineering and agentic coding tasks.
The restrictions have reshaped competition inside China’s AI market. Nvidia said in its latest annual report that it has effectively lost the ability to compete in China’s data center computing market after U.S. export rules prevented it from selling products that satisfy both American regulations and Chinese customer demand.
“As of the end of fiscal year 2026, we were effectively foreclosed from competing in China’s data center computing/compute market, and our effective foreclosure from the China market helped our competitors build larger developer and customer ecosystems to challenge us worldwide,” Nvidia said in the filing, according to a report from CNBC.
Chinese technology companies have moved to fill that gap. At WAIC, Huawei showcased its Atlas 950 SuperPoD supernode, a computing system built to connect large numbers of processors for AI model training and data center workloads. The company said the platform is intended to meet the computing requirements of large-scale AI infrastructure projects and foundation model development.
Xi’s message highlighted a broader shift in the global AI race. The competition is no longer centered only on building more capable models. It is increasingly about who supplies the computing infrastructure, sets the rules for AI governance, and becomes the preferred technology partner for countries building their own AI ecosystems.
