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Xi Jinping’s AI Vision

Xi’s speech addressed the attendees at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, but his real audience was the international community, and of course the United States.

China’s President Xi Jinping delivers opening remarks at the 2026 World AI Conference in Shanghai, China, July 17, 2026.

Xi Jinping, president of China and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), traveled to Shanghai in mid-July. Of his several missions in Shanghai, none was more important than his opening speech to the World Artificial Intelligence Conference. 

Breaking from the norm established since the first World Artificial Intelligence Conference was held in Shanghai in 2018, Xi himself, rather than a leader from the inner circles of the CCP, took the helm on July 17 and opened the conference with his thoughts. And his speech left no doubt that he has decided to take a leading role in the development of AI.

Xi’s speech addressed the attendees at the conference, but his real audience was the international community, and of course the United States, China’s chief competitor in AI development. Surprisingly, Xi began his speech by giving credit to the foreign sources that initiated the study and development of AI.

“Seventy years ago,” Xi told the assembly, “a group of young scholars proposed the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) for the first time at the Dartmouth Workshop in New Hampshire of the United States.”

The reference to the foreign, indeed American, creators who were the progenitors of AI is an uncharacteristic acknowledgement for a Chinese leader to make.

Xi’s nod to Western technology did not end with AI.

“In the course of history,” Xi said, “the invention of the steam engine heralded the industrial civilization, the widespread access to electricity brightened up modern society, and the birth of the internet brought the entire world together.”

All of these inventions originated in Europe or the United States.

While lauding the potential of AI, Xi did not shy away from the reality that much is still unknown about AI’s capabilities:

We human beings must answer the questions posed by our times: How to get along with thinking machines? How to ensure security when algorithm is part of decision-making? How to tackle ethical challenges by technologies through adaptive governance? How to realize AI for all when the divide keeps widening? These questions demand serious consideration and real answers from the whole international community.

We human beings must answer the questions posed by our times: How to get along with thinking machines? How to ensure security when algorithm is part of decision-making? How to tackle ethical challenges by technologies through adaptive governance? How to realize AI for all when the divide keeps widening? These questions demand serious consideration and real answers from the whole international community.

One must not forget, however, the world in which Xi Jinping believes.........

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