China’s AI Alliance Grows Amid Washington’s Call for Alignment
China’s World AI Cooperation Organisation (WAICO) has seen a surge in membership, adding nine new members just a month after its founding. According to the South China Morning Post, WAICO now boasts 38 signatories, up from the initial 29.
This growth occurs at a time when Washington is drafting a letter urging 35 countries to choose sides, suggesting they cannot be part of both camps.
WAICO was established on July 16th in Shanghai by 29 nations, a year after Premier Li Qiang proposed it at the World AI Conference. Xi Jinping emphasized during the accompanying summit that no single country should dominate AI technology, instead advocating for international cooperation.
China has further solidified this position with its recent submission of the "Position Paper on Global Cyber Governance in the Digital Intelligent Age" to the UN Global Mechanism on information and communications technologies in international security. The paper promotes respect for digital sovereignty and highlights the right of countries to independently develop AI technology.
This initiative builds upon China’s previous Global AI Governance Initiative, launched at the Belt and Road Forum in October 2023, which also emphasized respecting national sovereignty in AI product and service provision abroad.
The recent draft letter from the U.S. State Department to 35 signatories of its AI Opportunity Statement is aimed at countering this growing alliance. The letter warns against "duplicative initiatives" and suggests that being part of everything could mean being part of nothing, without directly mentioning China or WAICO.
However, the target is clear: to contain the spread of an alternative AI governance structure led by China.
While Washington pushes for a divided AI world, China counters with its robust AI ecosystem, as evidenced by the success of Alibaba’s Qwen family, which surpassed three billion downloads in six months, outperforming Google’s Gemma and Meta’s Llama. China has also committed to providing 5000 AI training places for developing nations, according to state media.