China has proposed a global action plan to govern artificial intelligence, just days after the United States unveiled its own plan to promote US dominance of the rapidly growing field that’s become a key bargaining chip in trade talks between the economic powerhouses.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang unveiled China’s vision for future AI oversight at the World AI Conference (WAIC), an annual gathering in Shanghai of tech titans from more than 40 countries.
“Overall, global AI governance is still fragmented. Countries have great differences, particularly in terms of areas such as regulatory concepts, institutional rules,” said Li in his speech on Saturday. “We should strengthen coordination to form a global AI governance framework that has broad consensus as soon as possible.”
Li’s remarks came just days after the Trump administration unveiled its 28-page AI action plan, which aims to remove “bureaucratic red tape” and establish US dominance in the sector.
While Li did not directly refer to the US in his speech, he alluded to the ongoing trade tensions between the two superpowers, which include American restrictions on advanced semiconductor exports — a component vital for powering and training AI, which is currently causing a shortage in China.
“Key resources and capabilities are concentrated in a few countries and a few enterprises,” said Li in his speech on Saturday. “If we engage in technological monopoly, controls and restrictions, AI will become an exclusive game for a small number of countries and enterprises.”
AI chips have become a key bargaining tool between US and China in trade negotiations, which continued this week with a meeting in Stockholm. Before the latest round of talks, both countries appeared to make concessions, with Washington lifting its ban on sales of a key Nvidia AI chip to China, and Beijing suspending its antitrust investigation into American chemical firm DuPont.
Speaking from Scotland on Sunday, Trump said the US is “very close to a deal with China,” but offered no further details. The current deadline for a deal expires on August 12.
Billions spent in global AI race
China has not been shy about promoting its AI ambitions: with more than 5,000 AI companies, and a core AI industry valued at 600 billion yuan ($84 billion) in April 2025, the nation is all-in on its tech rivalry with the US.
This surge is being fueled by enormous government and private sector spending. Between 2013 and 2023, state venture capital firms invested an estimated $209 billion into AI-related businesses, according to research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private think tank based in Massachusetts, and this year alone, public sector spending on AI is expected to top 400 billion yuan ($56 billion).
It’s still a fraction of what the US spends — private AI investment in the US reached $109.1 billion in 2024, around 12 times China’s $9.3 billion — but China’s commitment to the AI race is evident in other ways. Since 2017, China has published more patents for generative AI inventions annually than all other countries combined, according to data from the World Intellectual Property Organization.
All this investment is narrowing the gap between the US and China in the AI race.
Earlier this year, the launch of one-year-old Chinese startup DeepSeek’s new AI model R1 caused chaos on Wall Street and demonstrated China’s technical capabilities by quickly outpacing models by Meta and Anthropic. It was allegedly developed for just $5.6 million, a fraction of the cost spent to make other models like ChatGPT (over $100 million) and Gemini (almost $200 million.)
More recently, another startup Moonshot’s Kimi K2 model released earlier this month also sent ripples in the AI community for its lower cost and capabilities that outperform some Google and OpenAI’s models.
The rapid development of China’s AI market is even predicted to break even within the next few years, delivering a 52% return on investment as early as 2030, according to research from financial services firm Morgan Stanley.
Secretary-General of ASEAN, Dr. Kao Kim Hourn, also called for “robust governance” of artificial intelligence to mitigate potential threats, including misinformation, deepfakes, and cybersecurity threats.
“These developments demand urgent, coordinated action from the international community to ensure AI serves human welfare and social good,” he said in his speech at the conference, adding that AI implementation in ASEAN could further expand the region’s rapidly growing digital economy and “increase the region’s GDP by 10-18%.”
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt reiterated the call for international collaboration, explicitly calling on the US and China to work together.
“As the largest and most significant economic entities in the world, the United States and China should collaborate on these issues,” said Schmidt at WAIC. “We have a vested interest to keep the world stable, keep the world not at war, to keep things peaceful, to make sure we have human control of these tools.”
Other speakers included computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, sometimes referred to as “the godfather of AI” and French AI researcher and special envoy Anne Bouverot.
Latest robot tech displayed
Launched by Singaporean think tank Artificial Intelligence International Institute (AIII), the conference has been held in Shanghai since its inception in 2018 and has been an important platform for Chinese companies to showcase their technology to the world.
The event — which in the past has been attended by key figures in the tech industry, including Elon Musk and Jack Ma — features technology exhibitions, expert keynotes and discussion panels in a bid to further AI research, development and governance, something China hopes to play a leading role in.
Attended by more than 800 companies, WAIC 2025 was again dominated by Chinese tech firms, including Tencent, Alibaba, SoftBank-backed Keenon Robotics and robotics startup Unitree, with appearances from several major US corporations like Tesla, Alphabet, and Amazon.
Visitors explored tech innovations across 3,000 exhibits, which included over 100 new product debuts. They included new AI models from Tencent Holdings and Hong Kong-based company SenseTime, Alibaba’s first AI-powered smart glasses, new popcorn-serving bipedal robot models from Keenon Robotics, and cute companion “pet” robots from Shenzhen startup ZTE.
Other key exhibitions at the three-day event included Unitree’s G1 boxing robot, which quickly caught the attention of visitors and became a fan favorite on social media, dancing robot dogs developed by China Mobile, and PsiBot’s mahjong-playing humanoid.