China stood up the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) in Shanghai on 16 July with 29 founding countries, and used the launch to position itself as the convener of global AI governance while the United States retreats from multilateral tech norms.
What WAICO actually is
WAICO is an intergovernmental body headquartered in Shanghai whose stated remit is to promote international cooperation and coordinate AI regulation. Signatories skew toward the Global South — Indonesia, Brazil, Malaysia, South Africa, Senegal, Russia and Pakistan among them — with no G7 nation on the list. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attended the signing ceremony a day before the annual World AI Conference, where Moonshot's open-weight Kimi K3 was one of dozens of debuts.
Xi Jinping's pitch to the Global South
Chinese President Xi Jinping used his first-ever WAIC keynote to argue that "AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation," and warned against "overstretching the national security concept in the field of AI." Beijing pledged 5,000 AI training slots for developing nations and framed WAICO as an "important milestone in the history of AI development." Analysts read the moves as an attempt to shape UN-level AI policy before U.S., European and Japanese frameworks converge.
Why this matters for AI infrastructure
China holds decisive leads in cheap electricity and rare-earth minerals, and its regional AI infrastructure race is accelerating even as the U.S. tightens semiconductor export controls. WAICO gives Beijing a policy lever to match its industrial one — a template for norms on data governance, model licensing and cross-border deployment that friendlier partners can adopt without waiting for consensus at the UN. Companies including Anthropic, OpenAI and NVIDIA will need to track whether WAICO's rulebook diverges from the emerging U.S. framework.
Reporting based on coverage from Al Jazeera, Xinhua, The Next Web and Reuters.