WAIC and WAICO put China at center of global AI governance push

WAIC 2026 and the creation of WAICO formalize something that’s been implicit for a while: China wants to be the convening power for AI governance in the Global South. The Xinhua piece emphasizes inclusive capacity building, open‑source ecosystems and AI as a global public good, with voices from Ethiopia, Kenya, Thailand and Serbia praising China’s role in narrowing the AI divide.([en.people.cn](https://en.people.cn/n3/2026/0720/c90000-20479409.html)) Dawn’s column is more blunt, describing WAICO as Beijing’s attempt to "hold the pen" on AI standards and leverage infrastructure exports to lock in long‑term dependence.([dawn.com](https://www.dawn.com/news/amp/2016895))

For the AGI race, this means that model and deployment rules will not be written solely in Washington, Brussels and San Francisco. Countries that join WAICO are likely to coalesce around state‑centric, highly regulated approaches to AI, particularly in areas like surveillance, dual‑use capabilities and data localization. That could create a parallel regulatory stack under which Chinese and partner‑nation models are developed, trained and exported — potentially with different safety norms and red lines than those emerging from OECD processes.

The practical impact on timelines is ambiguous. Stronger guardrails and multilateral coordination might slow dangerous experimentation, but a cohesive pro‑deployment bloc with its own compute, data and standards could also accelerate the scale and breadth of AI rollouts outside the West.