The World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) is an intergovernmental body for international AI governance led by China. Chinese Premier Li Qiang unveiled the proposal on July 26, 2025, at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, alongside China's Global AI Governance Action Plan, a thirteen-point roadmap covering AI safety, infrastructure (compute, data centers, networks), data standards, and sustainable development (Source: carnegieendowment.org) (Source: english.www.gov.cn). On July 16, 2026, 29 countries — including China, Russia, Brazil, and Venezuela — signed an agreement in Shanghai establishing the organization (Source: reuters.com). Xi Jinping confirmed the Shanghai headquarters in his July 17, 2026 keynote at the World AI Conference — the first by a Chinese head of state at the event — stating that "WAICO has come into being in Shanghai" and describing it as "a major move by China to answer the call of the Global South" (Joining Hands to Build a Just and Equitable System For Global AI Governance (Xi Jinping, WAIC keynote, July 2026); also theinformation.com). The same address placed WAICO at the end of a sequence of Chinese AI-governance instruments — the Global AI Governance Initiative, the UN General Assembly resolution on international cooperation for AI capacity building, the AI Capacity Building Action Plan for Good and for All, and the AI Plus International Cooperation Initiative — and announced three five-year commitments alongside it: 5,000 AI training and seminar opportunities for developing countries, international AI application cooperation centers with ASEAN, the League of Arab States, the African Union, CELAC, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and BRICS, and access for 30 countries to the AI-powered meteorological warning system MAZU. Beyond the founding membership, the organization's functional and administrative details remained largely unspecified.
Stated purpose and structure
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has described WAICO as a measure to "advance" the Global AI Governance Initiative and to coordinate international cooperation on AI development and governance (Source: mfa.gov.cn). Chinese officials have positioned the body as complementing United Nations processes rather than replacing them: the 2025 Global AI Governance Action Plan names the UN as the "main channel" for an equitable global framework and references the Global Digital Compact (Source: carnegieendowment.org).
According to analysis by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, WAICO is expected, once operational, to build preliminary consensus on AI governance among participating states and to coordinate positions that China could then carry into UN forums. The proposal is also described as a means to consolidate China's existing network of bilateral and regional AI cooperation centers, including the China-BRICS AI Development & Cooperation Centre (established January 2025, headquartered in Shanghai) and the China-Laos AI Innovation Cooperation Center (Source: carnegieendowment.org).
Diplomatic context
WAICO is a component of a broader shift in Chinese AI diplomacy from exporting infrastructure and technical standards toward shaping the rules, norms, and institutions of global AI governance. The Carnegie analysis frames the proposal against a contemporaneous US retreat from international cyber and AI norms-setting, including the Trump administration's January 2026 withdrawal from several multilateral bodies and reductions in State Department cyber-diplomacy capacity (Source: carnegieendowment.org). The same account notes that developing countries had not, as of mid-2026, broadly endorsed the proposed institutional architecture, engaging selectively with Chinese, EU, and US approaches.
The United States has treated WAICO as a target of its own AI diplomacy. At the second summit of the State Department's Pax Silica initiative on June 25, 2026, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said officials "must dispel the chimera of AI global governance" developing in the United Nations and in WAICO, framing the US objective as limiting binding international AI regulation while securing supply chains through strategic partnerships (Source: insideaipolicy.com).
Relationships
- related: US-China AI Competition: Different Races, Different Metrics — WAICO is an instrument of China's side of the governance competition
- related: Pax Silica (US-Led AI Supply-Chain Initiative) — the US State Department initiative that explicitly positions against WAICO and UN-centered AI governance
- related: Critical Minerals and AI — Pax Silica pairs opposition to WAICO with supply-chain strategy
- regulated-by: — n/a (WAICO is itself a proposed governance body)