Xi Jinping is General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and President of the People's Republic of China. His statements set the authoritative frame for Chinese AI policy, and his July 2026 keynote at the World AI Conference is the primary text most frequently cited for China's positions on open-weight models, export controls, and international AI governance.
Positions and statements
World AI Conference keynote, July 17, 2026. Xi delivered the opening address at the 2026 World AI Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance in Shanghai, the first such address by a Chinese head of state at the event (Joining Hands to Build a Just and Equitable System For Global AI Governance (Xi Jinping, WAIC keynote, July 2026)). It sets out four principles:
- Openness. AI "is moving from the digital world into the physical world," and states should "seize this rare, historic opportunity to encourage open source, openness, collaboration and sharing."
- Security and controllability. States should build laws, regulations, technological monitoring, and early-warning and emergency-response systems to "ensure that AI is always under human control" — while jointly opposing "overstretching the national security concept in the field of AI and placing one country's security over that of others."
- Civilizational inclusiveness. AI "should not erode or undermine the diversity of world civilizations," and its values should be shaped by "humanity's common values."
- Multilateralism. "True multilateralism" recognizing "the important role of the United Nations," with alignment on development strategies, governance rules, and technical standards toward "a consensus-based global governance framework."
The address confirmed that WAICO had "come into being in Shanghai" and announced 5,000 AI training opportunities for developing countries over five years, regional 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 MAZU meteorological warning system.
Global AI Governance Initiative. Xi proposed the initiative that China cites as the origin of its subsequent AI diplomacy, including the UN General Assembly resolution on international cooperation for AI capacity building, the AI Capacity Building Action Plan for Good and for All, the AI Plus International Cooperation Initiative, and the WAICO proposal.
Defense applications. At a Politburo study session on the afternoon of July 30, 2026, Xi called for expanded defense applications of autonomous and artificial-intelligence technologies, according to Xinhua. The source's body was behind a paywall with only the lede retrievable, so the session's specific directives are not recorded here (Source: bloomberg.com). See Autonomous Weapons and US-China AI Competition: Different Races, Different Metrics.
Reception and interpretation
Ben Thompson reads the open-source language as strategic rather than ideological — "The strategy for China is obvious: commoditize your complements" — emphasizing Xi's explicit link to the physical world, where China's lead in robotics benefits from widely available models (Who's Afraid of Chinese Models? (Ben Thompson, Stratechery, July 2026)). The same speech's objection to "overstretching the national security concept" is read in Western policy commentary as directed at US export controls. See Export Controls (AI), Open-Weight Frontier Models.
Relationships
- supports: Joining Hands to Build a Just and Equitable System For Global AI Governance (Xi Jinping, WAIC keynote, July 2026) — author of the keynote
- related: Chinese AI Policy — sets the authoritative frame
- related: World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), US-China AI Competition: Different Races, Different Metrics, Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC)