Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, spoke about the future of technology at the annual AI conference.Image: keystone
July 17, 2026, 07:18July 17, 2026, 07:18
China’s state and party leader Xi Jinping is calling for more control over the use of artificial intelligence and more open access to the powerful technology in the AI competition with the USA. “We should increase risk awareness and ensure that AI is safe and controllable,” he said at the opening of the World AI Conference in Shanghai.
Xi advocated a combination of laws, surveillance and early warning systems to prevent misuse of AI. The president’s first speech at the conference, which has been held annually since 2018, shows the increased importance of AI for the ruling Communist Party.
Xi advocated developing the technology together and made it clear that national security should not be used as a reason to block AI models from others. He did not mention individual countries. However, the US government temporarily restricted access to certain AI models in June.
Competition with US competition
With its efforts in future technology, China is ultimately challenging the AI pioneer and main rival, the USA. Tech companies from the United States accuse Chinese competitors of illegally hijacking American technology in order to train their own models. The Chinese deny this.
Xi Jinping stands in front of the other visitors to the World AI Conference in Shanghai.Image: keystone
A day before Xi’s speech, 29 countries signed an agreement to establish a World Organization for Cooperation on Artificial Intelligence (WAICO) based in Shanghai. According to the Chinese state news agency Xinhua, the signatories include countries friendly to the People’s Republic such as Russia, Indonesia and Kazakhstan. WAICO is intended to promote collaboration and global control in the field of AI.
This would give China a platform to negotiate standards in the field of AI. In any case, Beijing has long been demanding that the development of artificial intelligence should not be in the hands of a few countries. “The future of AI should not be determined by monopolies or geopolitical rivalries, but by the extent to which its innovations are shared and how broadly their benefits are felt,” commented Xinhua, which is considered the mouthpiece of the Communist Party.
China startup presents new AI model
Just in time for the start of the conference, the Chinese startup Moonshot AI released “Kimi K3,” a new AI model that, according to the company, has 2.8 trillion parameters. The number of parameters indicates the complexity of the model. Simply put: the more parameters it has, the higher its performance.
The Beijing company wants to catch up with its US rivals OpenAI and Anthropic, which have so far been able to solve particularly complex tasks better with their most powerful models. The two companies do not make their parameter numbers public. However, market experts expect that the lead of US developers over the increasingly powerful and cheaper AI models from China could melt. (nil/sda/awp/dpa)