Chinese President Xi Jinping used his debut appearance at the World AI Conference on Friday to position Beijing as a champion of global cooperation on artificial intelligence.
Addressing government and industry leaders at the Shanghai summit, Xi said AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation.
He added the world should jointly oppose overstretching the national security concept in the field of AI or placing one country’s security over that of others.
The remarks come as Xi called for a “people-centered” approach to AI technology in his keynote address. He spoke of China’s role in ensuring equitable access to AI capacity-building for developing countries to prevent what he called “new historical injustices.”
To that end, Xi announced Beijing would expand training programs for developing nations and deepen AI cooperation with blocs including ASEAN, the African Union and the Arab League, according to reporting from the summit.
He also stressed the need for laws, technological monitoring, early-warning systems and emergency-response mechanisms to keep AI under human control.
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In May, the United States Commerce Department put restrictions on shipments of advanced AI chips to subsidiaries of Chinese companies located outside China, closing loopholes in Washington’s export-control regime.
Washington has separately accused Chinese entities of running large-scale operations to copy the capabilities of leading American AI models, while a Chinese regulator has flagged security concerns of its own about US software tools, underscoring how deeply security anxieties now run in both directions.
Even so, Chinese AI models have been making rapid inroads internationally. Their share of usage among American companies on the OpenRouter marketplace is nearing a record 60%, driven largely by lower costs, based on data cited by Bloomberg.
The country still trails the US in access to cutting-edge semiconductors but holds an edge in the cheap electricity needed to power the massive data centers that run AI systems, generating more than twice as much electricity as the US, a lead expected to widen as Beijing invests heavily in its power grid.
The four-day conference, themed around AI partnership, also featured a high-level session on global AI governance attended by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, reflecting the growing international stakes as governments race to shape the rules for a technology reshaping economies and militaries alike.
