Artificial intelligence should not be a solo show of one country, but a symphony of international cooperation.
That was the framing of Chinese President Xi Jinping on July 17 when he opened the 2026 AI World Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance in Shanghai, his first in-person appearance at the event.
It’s a fine line and captures a real anxiety felt in much of the developing world that the AI revolution could entrench rather than narrow the gap between rich and poor nations.
A day before Xi spoke, representatives from 29 countries, including Kazakhstan, Laos, Pakistan, Russia and Indonesia, signed an agreement establishing the World Organization for Artificial Intelligence Cooperation, a new intergovernmental body headquartered in Shanghai.
Xi called her creation a historical momentand Beijing promised 5,000 AI training and research opportunities for developing countries over the next five years, along with new cooperation centers targeting ASEAN, the Arab League, the African Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS members.
This is not China’s first foray into this idea. Beijing presented a global AI cooperation body at last year’s WAIC, but the proposal was vague. This year, it received legal form, a headquarters and 29 founding signatories, along with PRESENCE of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the signing ceremony, which gives the initiative a degree of international legitimacy that a purely Chinese program would lack.
Xi’s call to the Global South is genuine and timely. Many emerging economies have seen the AI race unfold as a race between a handful of US and Chinese firms with the computing, capital and chips to compete, and have found little way to shape the rules rather than simply take them.
A body that promises application-focused training, workshops and collaboration centers, rather than policy-driven investments, addresses a real gap. Officials in Southeast Asia and the Arab world have reason to take the offer seriously.
But the framing deserves consideration in addition to its welcome. WAICO comes explicitly as a counterweight to what Chinese officials and state media describe as Western dominance of AI governance, and start amid growing competition between Washington and Beijing over the future of the global AI ecosystem.
That doesn’t make the initiative disingenuous, but it does mean that the “symphony” metaphor sits alongside a fairly conventional exercise in great-power technology diplomacy, one in which Beijing is building influence and standard-setting power in the very arenas where Washington has historically led.
The conspicuous absence of major US tech firms from the Shanghai summit underscores how far the two tracks of governance have already diverged.
There is also a story to weigh. Last year’s WAIC produced an Action Plan for AU Governance and a proposal for the same collaborative organization that is being formally launched, but independent trackers noted at the time that public details were sparse and implementation unclear.
A year on, WAICO has moved from proposal to signed agreement, which is real progress, but the hardest test, whether the training sites, collaboration centers and technology transfers materialize at the promised rate, is still ahead.
Member governments and observers will want to see delivery, not just statements, before giving Beijing credit for closing the access gap it describes.
None of this should obscure what is truly new here. The world’s first intergovernmental organization built specifically around AI collaboration is an obvious institutional fact, whatever one thinks of its sponsor or politics.
For countries long accustomed to being AI rule takers rather than rule makers, an invitation to help write the rules, even one issued by Beijing and shaped by its interests, is worth engaging with rather than dismissing.
The test now moves from speech to speech. Xi has offered the Global South a place in the AI conversation.
Whether WAICO becomes a true platform for shared benefits, or another place where a rising power sets the terms smaller states must accept, will depend on what happens in the Shanghai Cooperation Centers over the next five years, not on what was said at the podium this week.
Dr. Bilal Habib Qazi works as a research analyst at the Institute of Regional Studies, Islamabad. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s affiliated institution.
