China puts Shanghai at center of rival AI governance bloc

Chinese President Xi Jinping announced 5,000 AI training slots for Global South countries over the next five years at the World AI Conference in Shanghai, as China moved to formalize a separate track for international AI governance. A day earlier, 29 nations established the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, or WIKO, with Shanghai as its headquarters and no Western country among its founding members.

The group was first proposed in 2025 and is now backed by countries including Russia, Brazil, South Africa, Pakistan and Indonesia. The membership list puts China at the center of an AI policy coalition built around developing-world and non-Western partners, rather than the U.S. and European institutions that have shaped much of the recent debate over AI safety, export controls and standards.

For the technology industry, the significance is less about a single program than the institutional split it represents. AI governance is increasingly tied to access to chips, model development, cloud infrastructure and cross-border deployment. WIKO gives Beijing and aligned governments a forum to define AI cooperation on terms that do not rely on Western participation.

Xi also said AI should remain under human control, according to remarks at the conference. That position overlaps with language used in other global AI safety discussions, but China is pairing it with a push for a governance structure where it has more influence.

He also criticized the use of broad national security arguments in AI policy. The comment was aimed at the kind of restrictions the United States has applied to advanced AI chips and related technologies, which have become a central pressure point in the U.S.-China technology contest.

Xi said China’s “Smart Economy,” a category covering AI and other digital technologies, is now valued at more than one trillion renminbi, or about $140 billion. The figure was presented by Xi, and no additional breakdown was disclosed in the announcement.

The 5,000 training slots are aimed at countries in the Global South, according to Xi. China did not frame the initiative as a commercial investment round or a corporate partnership. It is better read as a state-led capacity-building effort, designed to build relationships with governments that may later adopt Chinese-backed approaches to AI policy, infrastructure and technical standards.

WIKO’s launch also gives China a recurring platform tied to Shanghai, already the host city for the World AI Conference. That matters because AI policy is moving from broad statements of principle into more concrete fights over standards, compute supply, model oversight and national security rules. A China-led organization with 29 founding countries gives Beijing a venue to contest those rules outside Western-led channels.

This story draws on original reporting from The Decoder.