SHANGHAI, July 26 (Reuters) - China said on Saturday it wanted to create an organisation to foster global cooperation on artificial intelligence, positioning itself as an alternative to the U.S. as the two vie for influence over the transformative technology.
China wants to help coordinate global efforts to regulate fast-evolving AI technology and share the country’s advances, Premier Li Qiang told the annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai.
President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday released an AI blueprint aiming to vastly expand U.S. AI exports to allies in a bid to maintain the American edge over China in the critical technology.
Li did not name the United States but appeared to refer to Washington’s efforts to stymie China’s advances in AI, warning that the technology risked becoming the “exclusive game” of a few countries and companies.
China wants AI to be openly shared and for all countries and companies to have equal rights to use it, Li said, adding that Beijing was willing to share its development experience and products with other countries, particularly the “Global South”. The Global South refers to developing, emerging or lower-income countries, mostly in the southern hemisphere.
How to regulate AI’s growing risks was another concern, Li said, adding that bottlenecks included an insufficient supply of AI chips and restrictions on talent exchange.
“Overall global AI governance is still fragmented. Countries have great differences particularly in terms of areas such as regulatory concepts, institutional rules,” he said. “We should strengthen coordination to form a global AI governance framework that has broad consensus as soon as possible.”
Anyone have insights into whether this is a genuine offer that could be taken up by members of the administration if they have the right attitude vs a simple power play by China to try to get more support from potential allies?
Trying to gauge how cynical to be here.
The first step is to understand what is being proposed. There’s nothing about existential risk or AI takeover here. The talking points are (1) the world should coordinate on all aspects of AI governance (2) countries who aren’t AI powers need a seat at the table (3) the headquarters of this new organization will be in China. Point 1 is addressed to everyone including America. Point 2 is arguably addressed to everyone but America. Perhaps we could say that, since Chinese AI doesn’t have the same brand recognition as American AI, they are sweetening the deal for potential sovereign customers, by offering to give them a say in the politics of AI.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PfyTyZKASezFynYmv/?commentId=ay33KErjBsCLDqfZa
Xi Jinping seems kind of safety pilled or like he’s going that way as far as I’ve seen. I’ve had around 5-7 people that are goverannce related and knowledgable about the China situation that are datapoints towards that being the case? Maybe 1-2 people against it?
Not on the average likelihood of the deal but it seems to me that china is somewhat safety aligned
I want to update this comment with the following that I saw Dan Fagella share on facebook. I trust Dan’s take here more than I do my own since he was there and so I want to revise the above and say that this seems like a more plausible potential take? (It is still somewhat coherent with the information above just update with the opinion of the people in the middle who often have a better idea of what is going on):
China/the CCP have had to actually try to align social media algorithms, for better/worse and several members have a phd in computer science.
I think they’re generally better informed on this than every government I’ve seen
The text of the plan is here:
http://hk.ocmfa.gov.cn/eng/xjpzxzywshd/202507/t20250729_11679232.htm
Features a section on AI safety:
”Advancing the governance of AI safety. We need to conduct timely risk assessment of AI and propose targeted prevention and response measures to establish a widely recognized safety governance framework. We need to explore categorized and tiered management approaches, build a risk testing and evaluation system for AI, and promote the sharing of information as well as the development of emergency response of AI safety risks and threats. We need to improve data security and personal information protection standards, and strengthen the management of data security in processes such as the collection of training data and model generation. We need to increase investment in technological research and development, implement secure development standards, and enhance the interpretability, transparency, and safety of AI. We need to explore traceability management systems for AI services to prevent the misuse and abuse of AI technologies. We need to advocate for the establishment of open platforms to share best practices and promote international cooperation on AI safety governance worldwide.”
A link to the original article would be appreciated
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-proposes-new-global-ai-cooperation-organisation-2025-07-26/