China Offers More Inclusive Path for Global AI Governance

As artificial intelligence reshapes the global economy, the question of who governs this transformative technology, and on whose terms, has become one of the defining geopolitical challenges of the era.

In June 2026, China released a white paper, “More Just and Equitable Global Governance: China’s Principles, Proposals and Actions,” reaffirming its commitment to establishing the World AI Cooperation Organization (WAICO) and articulating a vision for international AI cooperation that stands in marked contrast to Western approaches.

China’s approach: WAICO and its ecosystem

The World AI Cooperation Organization was first proposed by Premier Li Qiang on July 26, 2025, at the opening of the World AI Conference in Shanghai. Alongside the proposal, China unveiled its 13-point Global AI Governance Action Plan outlining its vision for international cooperation on artificial intelligence.

By June 2026, China confirmed it was accelerating preparations for the organization’s establishment, with its headquarters tentatively planned for Shanghai. Foreign Minister Wang Yi has said China welcomes broad participation from stakeholders worldwide to promote “AI for good.”

WAICO occupies a unique position in the global AI governance landscape. According to analysis from Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy, it combines three features no existing multilateral body currently holds: membership open to any sovereign state; no values or regime-type test for entry; and an agenda built around development and bridging the global capability divide.

That stands in contrast to Western-led bodies, which often gate membership by shared values, such as the G7, and tend to operate as voluntary frameworks aimed at protecting the competitive advantages of Western technology powerhouses.

As announced at its inception, WAICO is guided by six principles: AI for good and for the people; respect for sovereignty; development orientation; safety and controllability; fairness and inclusivity; and open cooperation. These principles translate into three major operational goals.

First, WAICO aims to deepen innovation cooperation by building a “supply-demand matching platform” — a structured mechanism, perhaps a digital marketplace — designed to connect countries and organizations that have AI capabilities, technologies or resources with those that need them.

Second, it seeks to “promote inclusive development” by helping Global South countries strengthen capacity building and foster AI innovation ecosystems to bridge the so-called “intelligence gap.”

Third, it intends to “strengthen collaborative governance” by aligning development strategies, governance rules and technical standards to establish a globally recognized AI governance framework.

WAICO does not exist in isolation. China has constructed a comprehensive ecosystem of initiatives to support global AI cooperation. At the United Nations, China promoted the adoption of a General Assembly resolution on “Enhancing International Cooperation on Capacity-Building of Artificial Intelligence” and launched the AI Capacity-Building Action Plan for Good and for All to help developing countries build technical expertise.

China has also established complementary institutions. The World Data Organization, launched in Beijing in March 2026, aims to bridge the data divide and advance global data cooperation.

The Digital South Project, operating under the Global Development Project Pool, supports digital development in the Global South. The Group of Friends for International Cooperation on AI Capacity-Building, created by China, aims to build consensus among the international community.

On the technological front, China has developed a robust open-source ecosystem. Major Chinese companies, including Alibaba, with its Qwen “open-weight model family,” and DeepSeek, have made significant AI models freely available, fostering global digital sovereignty and bridging the technological divide. This approach rejects what Chinese officials describe as “closed and exclusive development models” and technological monopolies.

The Western alternatives

The contrast with Western approaches is instructive. The United States, despite being home to several leading AI companies, has no comprehensive federal AI law. During President Trump’s second term, the administration has pursued a deregulatory, innovation-first approach while recently pivoting toward national security concerns.

In January 2025, Trump revoked the Biden administration’s relatively weak AI executive order, which had created domain-specific oversight rather than a unified framework. He directed agencies to remove barriers to U.S. AI leadership.

In December 2025, he signed an executive order that established a national AI policy framework, directed federal agencies to challenge state-level AI regulations and created an AI Litigation Task Force to sue states with “onerous” AI laws.

However, the release of powerful new models such as Anthropic’s Mythos, which researchers say can spot decades-old vulnerabilities in widely used computer systems, forced a policy recalibration. On June 2, Trump signed a new executive order establishing a voluntary framework for pre-release government review of “covered frontier models” and creating an AI cybersecurity clearinghouse coordinated by the Treasury Department.

Yet the order bars mandatory licensing or pre-clearance, keeping the administration’s light-touch stance while adding a security agenda built on voluntary industry cooperation.

Internationally, the U.S. participates in the G7 Hiroshima AI Process, which promotes risk-based governance and transparency but amounts to voluntary guidelines for G7 nations rather than a universal membership organization. The U.S. has also maintained and expanded export controls on advanced chips and AI-related hardware, creating barriers to global cooperation.

The European Union has taken a more regulatory approach with one of the world’s first comprehensive, binding AI laws, the EU AI Act, which is being phased in, with many core provisions applying from August 2026. The act categorizes AI into four risk levels and imposes strict requirements on high-risk systems and systemic-risk general-purpose AI models.

While the EU has launched capacity-building programs and digital dialogues with partner countries, its approach remains fundamentally values-based, seeking to align partners with European rules on human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

The G7 collectively has focused on AI safety, cybersecurity and supply chain resilience through the Hiroshima AI Process. However, the G7 accounts for about 29% of global GDP (PPP) and functions as a club of “like-minded” advanced economies, not a universal body.

Initiatives like Canada’s “AI4D Africa” and the U.K.’s AI Security Institute represent positive steps, but they remain limited in scope and scale compared with China’s comprehensive institutional proposals.

A different philosophical foundation

The fundamental divergence lies in the philosophical underpinnings. China’s approach, as articulated in the June 2026 white paper and WAICO’s founding documents, treats AI governance primarily as a development issue. It recognizes that the Global South risks being permanently left behind in the AI revolution and proposes structural solutions, including new institutions, open-source technology sharing and capacity-building programs, to address this gap.

Western approaches, by contrast, tend to treat AI governance primarily as a risk-management and values-projection exercise. The U.S. prioritizes national security and competitive advantage. The EU prioritizes regulatory oversight and rights protection. Both operate through existing clubs of advanced Western economies or extraterritorial regulation rather than creating new, universally accessible institutions.

As the world stands at the threshold of an AI-transformed future, and with the quantum revolution on the horizon, the question of governance architecture will only grow more urgent. China’s WAICO proposal, alongside its broader ecosystem of initiatives, represents a distinctive approach, one that prioritizes universal participation, development orientation and open cooperation over values-based exclusion and fragmented regulation.

Whether WAICO succeeds in its ambitions will depend on the breadth of international participation it can attract and the tangible benefits it can deliver to the world, particularly developing nations. What is already clear, however, is that China has put forward a comprehensive, institution-building vision for global AI governance that offers a genuine alternative to a fragmented and more narrowly self-serving Western status quo. Given its inclusive foundation, there is strong reason to believe that WAICO will not only advance its goals but also catalyze a new era of AI-driven shared prosperity and collaborative innovation.

Josef Gregory Mahoney is a professor of politics and international relations and director of the Center for Ecological Civilization at East China Normal University in Shanghai. He is also a senior research fellow with the Institute for the Development of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics at Southeast University in Nanjing.