The World AI Cooperation Organization recently proposed by Chinese Premier Li Qiang on paper, may be a call for cooperation but in practice, it’s a direct counterweight to Washington’s unilateral push to dominate AI exports, frameworks, and infrastructure.
At the 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in July 2025 Liang offered details on a new supranational body meant to regulate, democratize, and shape the trajectory of artificial intelligence globally (The Guardian, 2025).
“The risks and challenges brought by artificial intelligence have drawn widespread attention,” he said, “How to find a balance between development and security urgently requires further consensus from the entire society.”
Days earlier, the Trump administration had unveiled a 28-page AI strategy focused squarely on reducing red tape and supercharging American dominance in the space (White House.Gov, 2025). China responded not with a threat, but with an invitation: one laced with power politics. Li didn’t mention the U.S. by name, but the target was unmistakable: “AI must not become the exclusive game of a few nations and enterprises,” he said.
With U.S. export bans limiting China’s access to advanced AI chips (read: NVIDIA), and with talent exchanges restricted, the country is developing its own workaround: governance leadership. By controlling the rulebook, Beijing can reduce dependency on Washington’s hardware and influence the frameworks under which global AI innovation unfolds.
This is soft power at the infrastructure level: define the standards, host the forums, set the norms, and eventually, shape how AI is built, deployed, and sold globally. The Global South, which has long been sidelined in high-tech policymaking, is Beijing’s natural audience. China’s message to them is simple: “We’ve been shut out too, so let’s rewrite the game together.”
So, is this a bid for global coordination or a blueprint for global influence?
While Beijing calls for open cooperation, it continues to expand its domestic surveillance regime using the same AI tools it seeks to democratize. Critics question whether China’s proposed global framework would truly safeguard human rights, data privacy, or algorithmic transparency, or merely entrench its influence under the guise of consensus-building.
China’s proposed AI governance model emphasizes, in theory, cross-border open-source collaboration, but leaves open how governance would be enforced, who would arbitrate disputes, and whether such an entity could remain neutral when its headquarters sit squarely under one nation’s jurisdiction.
Regulatory frameworks established today will determine who can access what technology, under what terms, and with what guardrails. They will define everything from algorithmic bias to geopolitical surveillance thresholds.
George Chen, a partner at the Asia Group, told CNBC that “China clearly wants to stick to the multilateral approach while the U.S. wants to build its own camp, very much targeting the rise of China in the field of AI.”
In geopolitics, as in AI, the first to set the standard often wins. Would a Beijing-based oversight institution reflect international values or Beijing’s? Will open-source collaboration lead to more equitable AI development or become a Trojan horse for influence? Who gets to define “responsible” AI when global standards begin to solidify? Those are questions that must be answered before moving forward with China’s governance proposal.