Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged international cooperation on development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), saying that it should not be dominated by one country.
He made this remark in his keynote address at the opening ceremony of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai.
Leaders in attendance included the leaders of Kazakhstan, Cambodia and Thailand and UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Chinese state media said that more than 1,100 companies and 1,400 guests are participating in the annual AI conference this year.
The conference showcases the cutting-edge technology Xi hopes will soon rival that of the United States. Chinese AI models are gaining ground on the most powerful offerings from the US, attracting global users with lower costs.
However, how to govern the booming sector has become a topic of debate amid concerns over the deployment of AI in military combat and its use by hackers or criminals.
In his address, Xi spoke of China’s role in ensuring equitable access to AI capacity-building for developing countries to prevent the creation of “new historical injustices.”
“AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation. We should jointly oppose overstretching the national security concept in the field of AI or placing one country’s security over that of others.”
Xi Jinping
To that end, he announced China’s plans to cooperate with international bodies to provide AI-related opportunities.
Xi said that China will expand AI cooperation with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the League of Arab States, the African Union, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS countries.
He promised to provide access for 30 countries to a Chinese-developed AI meteorological tool that provides early warning systems. Over the next five years, Xi said China will provide 5,000 AI training opportunities to developing countries,adding that closer partnerships can help prevent “historical injustice in AI.”
Ahead of the conference, 29 countries including Pakistan, Russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement with China to establish a World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization. State media described it as an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Shanghai promoting global AI governance.
According to state media citing officials, daily consumption in China of “tokens,” the industry unit of AI usage, has increased a thousandfold over the past two years.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a typical data centre can consume as much electricity as 100,000 households, while next-generation “hyperscale” facilities can gobble up as much power as two million homes.
China’s access to an abundant supply of cheap electricity places it in the ideal position to meet such colossal energy demands. It already generates more than twice as much electricity as the US, a lead that is expected to widen amid an aggressive state-led investment in the country’s energy grid.
Some technology analysts now believe China has become an innovator in AI and is no longer just catching up with the U.S. China’s five-year plan until 2030 has prioritized progress in frontiers of science and technology including AI.
China’s open-source AI models, like DeepSeek, are seen, especially across the developing world, as appealing and often more affordable than U.S. AI models, which are largely closed-source.
Coinciding with the conference, the Chinese AI startup Moonshot released its latest AI model, Kimi K3. It said that Kimi K3’s 2.8 trillion parameters, one of the measurements of an AI model’s capability, will make it the world’s largest open-source model.
DeepSeek’s V4 Pro version has 1.6 trillion parameters.Last month, another Chinese AI company Zhipu, or Z.ai, rolled out its new flagship GLM-5.2 open-source model in a challenge to U.S. rivals including Anthropic’s models.
Xi Emphasises Importance Of “People-centred” Approach To AI Technology
At Friday’s conference, Xi also stressed the need for a “people-centred” approach to AI with humans at the wheel. “We should put in place laws and regulations, technological monitoring, early warning, and emergency response systems, in order to … ensure AI is always under human control,” he said.
AI has become a strategic pillar of China’s industrial policy, driven by state investment aimed at building a domestic ecosystem, from chip production to consumer use.
The US and European Union have imposed restrictions on Chinese tech imports, citing national security concerns, while recent tussles between Washington and American AI labs have raised questions about who controls access to top technology.
In May, the US Commerce Department issued a notice affirming its restrictions on shipments of semiconductors to subsidiaries of Chinese companies located outside China amid concerns about loopholes in Washington’s export control regime.
The guidance said its licensing requirements for the export of advanced AI chips applied to all businesses with headquarters or a parent company in China.
