China's WAICO Initiative Signals a Shift in Global AI Rule-Making

WAICO's Founding and Institutional Design

The agreement signed on the eve of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference establishes WAICO as an autonomous entity committed to the purposes of the UN Charter. It emphasizes extensive consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefit while adopting a people-centered approach. UN Secretary-General António Guterres attended the ceremony, lending institutional weight to the proceedings. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, signed on behalf of China. Analysts note that the organization's design is deliberately open to all sovereign states, with an orientation toward development needs rather than restrictive security frameworks.

The establishment of WAICO draws instructive parallels with earlier China-led multilateral frameworks such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Silk Road Fund, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Whereas the AIIB, launched in 2015 with 57 founding members and now encompassing over 110 participants, emphasized infrastructure financing with weighted voting calibrated to capital contributions, WAICO adopts a more inclusive governance model that privileges consensus among developing nations alongside major stakeholders. This institutional design reflects lessons from the SCO’s security-oriented cooperation and the Silk Road Fund’s flexible bilateral lending, positioning WAICO as a normative rather than purely financial instrument. China’s Ministry of Commerce has coordinated the technical architecture of membership and funding mechanisms, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has leveraged diplomatic channels to secure endorsements from Global South capitals, ensuring that governance provisions embed principles of sovereign equality and technology sovereignty from the outset.

The WAICO agreement outlines a tiered governance structure featuring an annual ministerial council, a standing secretariat headquartered in Beijing, and specialized technical working groups on standards, ethics, and capacity building. Decision-making requires a two-thirds majority on substantive matters, with veto rights reserved for founding members on core constitutional amendments. These mechanisms deliberately balance China’s convening role with safeguards against unilateral dominance, incorporating mandatory reporting on AI safety benchmarks and provisions for rotating leadership among regional groupings. MOFCOM’s involvement has centered on operationalizing data-sharing protocols and investment facilitation clauses, whereas the MFA has embedded diplomatic language that aligns WAICO’s mandate with broader multilateral commitments, thereby enhancing its legitimacy among states wary of great-power competition.

The Composition of Founding Members: A Global South Focus

The 29 founding members include Algeria, Belarus, Brazil, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Congo, Cuba, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lesotho, Malaysia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, South Africa, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, and Zambia. This roster reflects heavy representation from the Global South, with numerous African, Southeast Asian, and Latin American states. Notable absences include the United States, most European Union members, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. The makeup underscores Beijing's strategy of building coalitions among nations seeking alternatives to Western-dominated technology regimes, aligning with China's broader foreign policy of expanding influence through inclusive multilateral platforms.

Xi Jinping's Strategic Vision at WAIC

At the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, which drew approximately 1,400 participants across 140 forums, Xi Jinping delivered a keynote address framing AI development as a collective endeavor. He stated that AI should not be a solo performance by a single country but a symphony of international cooperation. Xi further urged joint opposition to the overextension of national security concepts in AI or the prioritization of one nation's security above others. These remarks, delivered as China showcased advanced models positioned as cost-effective options for developing economies, serve as a direct counterpoint to unilateral restrictions on technology transfers. The address elevates AI as a pillar of China's diplomatic outreach, reinforcing the Dual Circulation strategy's outward dimension.

In his address at the 2026 World AI Conference, President Xi Jinping elaborated a vision of artificial intelligence development that places “people-centered” principles at its core, insisting that AI systems must remain “under human control” and serve the common prosperity of all nations rather than narrow commercial or strategic interests. This formulation extends the conceptual architecture of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan for the digital economy, which prioritizes indigenous innovation alongside international cooperation under the Digital Silk Road component of the Belt and Road Initiative. By linking WAICO to these domestic planning instruments, Xi signals an intent to export governance norms that integrate ethical oversight with infrastructure deployment, thereby offering an alternative pathway for countries seeking technological advancement without external conditionalities.

The emphasis on inclusive participation resonates with statements by Amandeep Singh Gill, UN Under-Secretary-General for Digital and Emerging Technologies, who has repeatedly underscored the necessity of meaningful developing-country engagement in AI rule-making. Gill’s advocacy aligns with WAICO’s institutional design, which allocates dedicated seats and funding windows for least-developed nations. This convergence suggests that China’s initiative may function as a complementary platform to UN processes, channeling resources toward capacity-building programs that translate high-level principles into operational standards tailored to diverse regulatory environments.

The US-China AI Rivalry in Multilateral Settings

Washington's absence from WAICO's founding membership occurs against a backdrop of ongoing technology restrictions, including export controls justified on national security grounds. Beijing has responded with measures limiting dual-use technology and critical minerals to US firms. The competition extends beyond hardware to normative influence, as both powers vie to define global standards. With the United States stepping back from certain cyber and AI norm-setting processes, China is advancing WAICO to demonstrate leadership in forums where developing countries hold sway. This dynamic mirrors broader tensions in which each side seeks to embed its preferences—openness and capacity-building on one side, export controls and alliance-based restrictions on the other—into emerging governance structures.

Escalating semiconductor export controls, reaffirmed by the US Department of Commerce in May 2026, have further restricted shipments of advanced chips and manufacturing equipment to Chinese subsidiaries, intensifying the technological bifurcation between the two powers. In response, Beijing has imposed retaliatory measures on dual-use technologies and critical minerals essential for AI hardware, creating reciprocal supply-chain frictions that WAICO seeks to mitigate through alternative cooperation frameworks. These dynamics underscore the strategic stakes surrounding the new organization, as participating states navigate pressures to align with either Washington’s alliance-based ecosystem or Beijing’s more open-access model.

Elizabeth Gibney’s analysis in Nature (2025) cautions that WAICO is unlikely to impose enforceable constraints on leading AI firms, given the absence of binding dispute-resolution mechanisms comparable to those in trade regimes. Nevertheless, the concept of “AI sovereignty” articulated within WAICO documents offers a distinct counterpoint to the US emphasis on private-sector leadership and extraterritorial regulatory reach. Whereas Washington promotes standards through export controls and voluntary industry commitments, WAICO advances a state-centric approach that privileges national regulatory autonomy and collective standard-setting among developing economies, potentially reshaping the normative terrain of global AI governance.

Implications for Global AI Norms and the Global South

WAICO's emphasis on accessibility and development offers lower-cost open-source alternatives to proprietary Western systems, potentially accelerating AI adoption in member states across Africa and Asia. By anchoring the organization in Shanghai and tying it to UN principles, China aims to channel Global South perspectives into AI policy discussions at the United Nations and beyond. Second-order effects could include strengthened regional cooperation within ASEAN and African Union frameworks, as well as new avenues for technology transfer that bypass traditional Western supply chains. For the EU and other Western actors, the initiative highlights the risk of fragmented governance, where parallel institutions compete to set rules on safety, ethics, and interoperability.

Heru Sutadi’s July 2026 assessment in Majalah ICT highlights the imperative for WAICO to forestall an “AI divide” in which Global South countries remain perpetual consumers of externally developed systems. By facilitating technology transfer and joint research initiatives, the organization could enable local innovation ecosystems rather than reinforcing dependency. This analysis gains particular salience amid the proliferation of Chinese open-source models such as DeepSeek and Qwen, which provide accessible alternatives to proprietary Western systems and lower barriers to entry for researchers and enterprises across emerging markets.

The diffusion of these open-source platforms is poised to reconfigure supply chains and technology-transfer patterns, encouraging regional production networks that bypass traditional chokepoints dominated by US and allied firms. For ASEAN and African Union frameworks, WAICO offers a vehicle to harmonize data-governance standards and pool computational resources, fostering collective bargaining power in international AI negotiations. Such cooperation could accelerate the development of context-specific applications in agriculture, healthcare, and public administration, thereby translating normative commitments into tangible developmental outcomes.

Future Trajectories in AI Governance

Looking ahead, WAICO's trajectory will depend on its ability to attract additional members and translate founding principles into concrete mechanisms for standards development and capacity assistance. China's strategic calculus favors an organization that advances technological self-sufficiency while expanding diplomatic leverage among non-aligned states. Should WAICO succeed in delivering tangible benefits to Global South participants, it could erode the centrality of existing Western-led processes. Conversely, persistent US-China frictions may limit cross-bloc collaboration, resulting in a bifurcated landscape of AI governance. The coming years will reveal whether this Shanghai-based body becomes a durable platform for shared rule-making or remains primarily a vehicle for Beijing's influence projection. By Prof. Marcus Chen, Staff Writer