It matters who writes the rules of the road as artificial intelligence is deployed in every industry in our lives, but the rulebook of policies, regulations and ethical guidelines could look very different depending on who writes it. China and the United States should be fighting for the pen, but America is barely in the running. China wants to work with the U.S. to jointly govern AI, according to its leader, Xi Jinping, who said in his recent state visit to Washington, D.C., that both nations had a responsibility to “manage AI for good.” “Good” for Beijing means AI models not only must remain under human control but also under the oversight of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
This summer, China created the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, or WAICO. This global AI governing body was designed to capture small and middle-income powers that find themselves outside the U.S. tech boom for political and ideological reasons and for their lack of relevant industry and resources. Beijing is offering these countries a say in AI rule-making because it knows the technology will only be as powerful as the framework that controls it.
In America, the world’s leading AI labs are shouting the loudest for regulation. President Donald Trump sees an irony in that and believes whoever makes the best AI will get to make the rules too. He’s half right: the global AI rule-maker will need buy-in from its users too—and China is already halfway there.
Technology has always outpaced regulation; it was the case with the internet and it will be the same with AI. The world may not be asking enough questions about who should govern AI and how, but the potential answers are already beginning to fragment along geopolitical lines. Since 2018, China has hosted the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai with the aim of institutionalizing its role in governing the technology now and in the future.
Many of WAICO's 37 members are on America’s AI cooperation blacklist: Cuba, Iran and Russia are unlikely to meet U.S. trust standards for technology sharing, ever. But if the United Nations has taught China anything, it’s the utility of securing votes from the forgotten corners of the world to legitimize its positions and demonstrate the hypocrisy of U.S. values. Secretary-General António Guterres attended WAICO’s inauguration and praised China for including the Global South.
Technology “cannot be governed by a handful of countries or a handful of companies,” he said. Observers say China moved to formalize WAICO after the U.S. established Pax Silica in December, 2025. The coalition of West-aligned countries seeks secure, end-to-end supply chains for the full AI tech stack, from data centers and power grids to critical minerals and advanced computer chips.
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