China Power | Diplomacy | East Asia

China’s New AI Club: The World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization 

Global tech governance is taking an institutional turn as a bloc-based system continues to solidify.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres attends the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, China, July 17, 2026.

On July 16, a day before the annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, officials from 29 countries signed an agreement establishing a new body: the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO). The event was attended by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and the deputy prime ministers of Kazakhstan, Laos, and Pakistan, among other dignitaries. Foreign Minister Wang Yi represented China at the signing ceremony.

The new organization, first proposed by China at the 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, will be headquartered in Shanghai and is meant to operate as an independent intergovernmental entity. WAICO’s stated aim is to promote international cooperation on AI so that it remains beneficial, safe, and fair for all, in line with the principles of the U.N. Charter and with a people-centered approach.

In his address at the opening of the 2026 WAIC the next day, President Xi Jinping set out China’s view that AI development should be a shared endeavor across nations, rather than something driven by a single nation. He announced plans to provide 5,000 training spots for developing countries over the next five years and to establish cooperation centers with groups like ASEAN, the African Union, and BRICS. 

The WAICO agreement stresses open participation without conditions tied to political systems or values. It places strong, or rather pointed, emphasis on narrowing the technology-access gap between richer and poorer nations. The founding members include a somewhat predictable list: Russia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, Kazakhstan, and other countries from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, with more to be revealed. Given the thinly veiled anti-Western edge, it is hardly surprising that no Western or strongly Western aligned country showed up among the founding nations, nor are they expected to do so in the future.

This composition points quite strongly to an emerging split in AI governance along geopolitical lines. Over time, this may well solidify into parallel ecosystems for standards, data governance, and infrastructure, with limited interoperability between them, further complicating an already fragmented landscape.

Although the emergence of WAICO might strike one as incredibly fast – it took just a single year from the proposal to the actual founding – China has been working toward this step for some time. Last year’s proposal formed part of Beijing’s broader Global AI Governance Initiative, which argues that rules should treat development needs as seriously as safety concerns. 

Beijing has criticized international efforts, such as those hosted in the United Kingdom, South Korea, France and India, for they tended to bring together advanced economies and focus heavily on managing high-risk systems and agreeing standards among close partners. Positioning itself as a champion of equitable AI access for developing nations, Beijing has argued that such arrangements exclude too many countries that need help to catch up on skills, data, and computing power. 

Indeed, Xi framed the initiative as a direct response to calls from the Global South. In other words, WAICO is not presented as a China-led initiative, but as a practical forum where members can, without entry barriers, work on training programs, joint projects, and basic governance ideas.

In practice, with this step China has gained a significant venue to shape conversations about standards and policy language, the importance and possible long-term effects of which cannot be understated. Yet this is not........

© The Diplomat