Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: Five Southeast Asian countries are represented in China’s new AI organization, Bangladesh wants to build a fence along its border with Myanmar, and a Thai civil service exam cheating scandal leads to arrests.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: Five Southeast Asian countries are represented in China’s new AI organization, Bangladesh wants to build a fence along its border with Myanmar, and a Thai civil service exam cheating scandal leads to arrests.

Last Thursday saw China launch its World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) in Shanghai, followed by a four-day conference on the matter. Government representatives from a number of Southeast Asian countries attended, including Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul on his first official visit to China since taking office.

Speaking at the conference, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for international cooperation on AI. China tech watcher Kyle Chan read the speech as Xi implicitly contrasting China’s open-source models with the United States’ closed models, rendering China a global goods provider and the United States a selfish tech hoarder.

But what does Southeast Asia make of this pitch? Of the 29 founding members of WAICO, five were from Southeast Asia: Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, and Myanmar.

How much significant is this? Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar are all to varying degrees seen as China-leaning in how they conduct their affairs, but they are peripheral to AI developments.

Indonesia is a regional heavyweight but under the current government has a habit of joining every international organization that it can. Malaysia plays an important role in semiconductor supply chains, but didn’t release an official statement after the conference, which makes its goals hard to parse. It maintains an independent foreign policy, though some think it tilts toward China.

Notably, Singapore did not join. Its preference for open-source AI aligns with China. But it is always wary of drawing too close to the superpower.

Despite being a guest of honor, Anutin also didn’t sign on to WAICO. In his speech at the conference, he laid out his own vision of AI governance—one that did not simply echo China’s stance, Thai political analyst Ken Lohatepanont observed.

Anutin’s three key principles were protection, potential, and prosperity. While stressing the need to not overregulate AI and its potential boons, Anutin seemed to be most preoccupied with the first point. Protection took up the biggest chunk of the speech, with a focus on AI risks with regard to fake news and scams.

Even though he didn’t join WAICO, Anutin stressed Thailand’s closeness with China. “China and Thailand are one family,” he declared in a Facebook post about the conference, showing himself and Xi alongside top officials from both countries.

For Anutin, there was a lot more than just AI on the agenda. First of all, there were the........

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