China floats ‘Waico’ to challenge US tech supremacy, Xi lures Global South for new AI world order

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday courted the Global South with a vision of a new AI world order built around open-source models.

At China's premier technology conference, the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Xi pitched a China-led AI order in which China would share technology and expertise. He announced that China would provide AI training and establish cooperation centres with Brics, Asean, Latin American, and African Union (AU) nations.

Through such partnerships, Xi challenged the United States' technological supremacy, saying that "AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation".

In an apparent response to American export controls directed at China, Xi said the world should "jointly oppose overstretching the national security concept in the field of AI or placing one country's security over that of others".

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The remarks followed the launch of the China-led World AI Cooperation Organisation (Waico), a grouping created as a rival to the US-led 'Pax Silica' initiative. Launched with 29 member-states, Xi described Waico as a "milestone in the history of world AI development" and pitched it as an intergovernmental AI cooperation body centred on the Global South.

The development comes amid concerns about the American overarching control of the world's AI infrastructure, prompting the likes of India and the European Union (EU) to pursue tech sovereignty and call for the decentralisation of the global tech ecosystem to prevent any one country or company from becoming a hegemon. Recently, the Donald Trump administration flexed its leverage when it barred foreigners from accessing Anthropic's Mythos and Fable models.

Analysts said Xi had made it clear that China intends to be a rule-maker in AI, not a rule-taker.

"Xi's message is clear: China is not going to follow anyone on both AI technology and standards. Instead, China is going to lead the world in both aspects," George Chen, Chair of Digital Practice at The Asia Group, told Reuters.

While American companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic still dominate the global AI ecosystem, China is making inroads with its open-source and affordable models, such as DeepSeek.

At the same conference, Chinese start-up Moonshot AI unveiled a new model, Kimi K3, which it described as the world's largest open-source model. The company acknowledged that Kimi K3 trails Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT 5.6 Sol in overall performance but claimed that it consistently outperformed other tested models, such as Claude Opus 4.8 and GPT 5.5, demonstrating that Chinese AI models are rapidly catching up with their Western counterparts despite export controls.

In yet another sign of China's rapid advancement, AFP noted that the country has filed more generative AI patents than any other nation. Between 2024 and 2025, China recorded more than 43,000 such filings.