Leaders and representatives from 40 nations and international organizations gathered in Shanghai on Friday for the 2026 High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance, marking the formal establishment of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO)—a body Chinese President Xi Jinping first proposed a year ago.
In his address to the gathering, Xi stressed the importance of “a people-centered approach” to “develop AI for the positive and for good. We should ensure that AI is an important driver for shared prosperity and common security. We should join hands to build a just and equitable system for global AI governance.” He called on nations to treat AI development as “a symphony of international cooperation” rather than “a solo performance by a single country.”
Xi laid out four principles for global AI governance: pursuing openness and win-win innovation; ensuring AI remains secure, controllable, and under human oversight; protecting the diversity of world civilizations from being eroded by AI’s spread; and strengthening multilateral solidarity through the United Nations. He specifically urged countries to “jointly oppose overstretching the national security concept in the field of AI and placing one country’s security over that of others”—a call in harmony with the important intervention of Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas encyclical on the topic of AI and its call for an unarmed and disarming peace.
To back the initiative, Xi announced that China will provide developing nations with 5,000 AI training and seminar opportunities over the next five years, establish AI application cooperation centers with ASEAN, the Arab League, the African Union, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and BRICS, and extend China’s AI-powered meteorological warning system, MAZU, to 30 countries.
Xi noted that China has embraced AI “with open arms” and that its core smart economy industries are already worth at least RMB 1 trillion yuan. He also pointed to the country’s concert with “providing international public goods relating to AI,” hence China’s proposal for a Global AI Governance Initiative, its role in passing a U.N. General Assembly resolution on AI capacity-building, and its AI Capacity-Building Action Plan for Good and for All as prior steps toward Friday’s launch.
