China’s AI governance body already has 29 members. The West has none.

China did not ask the United States or Europe to join.

On July 16, China formalized a new international organization to govern artificial intelligence: 29 founding member nations, a Shanghai headquarters, and the United Nations Secretary-General in the room when the papers were signed. The World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, known as WAICO, was established at a signing ceremony on the eve of the annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference, where President Xi Jinping opened the event in person for the first time.

The member roster maps the Global South: Indonesia, Brazil, Malaysia, South Africa, Senegal, Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Belarus, Cuba, Venezuela, and 17 additional signatories. Conspicuously absent: the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, and South Korea.

Wang Yi, China’s Foreign Minister, signed the founding agreement on Beijing’s behalf. António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, attended the ceremony and lent WAICO the imprimatur of multilateral legitimacy before it has demonstrated any enforcement capacity.

Xi Jinping’s address set the ideological frame. “AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation,” he said. He also called on members to jointly oppose “overstretching the national security concept”, language pointing directly at US semiconductor export controls, which have blocked Chinese AI firms from advanced chips and which Beijing has consistently characterized as economic aggression in the guise of security policy.

WAICO’s stated goals are expansive: develop AI regulation that is people-centred and keeps AI under human control; provide affordable AI models to member nations; redistribute what China characterizes as an unfair global concentration of AI resources. That last commitment has concrete implications. Member countries across Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America have struggled to access frontier AI tools, whether due to cost, regulatory barriers, or the simple absence of training data in their languages. WAICO positions Chinese-developed models as an alternative supply.

Analysts who study AI governance describe the WAICO model as state-centric: governments retain authority over how AI is deployed, rather than delegating oversight to the technology industry. That diverges from the predominantly industry-led trajectory of US AI policy, and sits in tension with the EU’s more regulatory but still market-compatible AI Act. A split in AI governance that had been implicit in the rhetoric of digital sovereignty is now formalized.

Whether WAICO gains real enforcement capacity, binding regulations, and a dispute-resolution function, or remains a declaration-level forum, the first year of its operation will determine. What no longer remains open: two distinct visions for how AI should be governed are now institutional, each backed by significant populations. The West did not show up. WAICO has a 29-country head start.

Tags: artificial intelligence, China, AI governance, Global South, WAICO, Xi Jinping