Xi Jinping Opens World AI Conference in Shanghai

President Xi Jinping will attend the opening ceremony and deliver a keynote speech at the 2026 World AI Conference (WAIC) and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance in Shanghai from July 17 to 20. The event, themed "AI Partnership for a Brighter Future," marks the first time the Chinese president will personally deliver the keynote address, signaling Beijing's ambition to transition from a rule-taker to a rule-maker in international AI governance.

China is utilizing the summit to promote the World AI Cooperation Organization (WAICO), a proposed body intended to offer an alternative governance architecture for the Global South. This effort aligns with the Global AI Governance Initiative and the AI Capacity-Building Action Plan for Good and for All, which includes the MAZU early warning system used by over 40 countries. International attendees include United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and the prime ministers of Thailand and Cambodia.

The conference features over 1,400 international guests and 1,100 companies across a 100,000-square-meter exhibition area. A major focus is hardware autonomy, highlighted by Huawei's debut of the Atlas 950 computing super node system, which uses all-optical interconnects to bypass reliance on U.S. chips. Additionally, ZTE subsidiary Nubia is unveiling the first agentic AI phone. These developments coincide with data from Stanford's 2026 AI Index indicating that the performance gap between top American and Chinese AI models has narrowed to 2.7 percentage points.