China's AI coalition continues to expand, while Washington urges nations to make a choice.

      China’s World AI Cooperation Organisation has seen its membership increase from 29 to 38 members just a month after its establishment, as reported by the South China Morning Post. This growth coincides with Washington's move to draft a letter informing 35 countries that they cannot be part of both alliances.

      WAICO was officially formed in Shanghai on July 16, with 29 countries signing the agreement, a year after Premier Li Qiang first introduced the concept at the World AI Conference. During the associated summit, Xi Jinping asserted that no single nation should dominate AI technology, describing AI development as "a symphony of international cooperation" instead of "a solo performance by one nation."

      The principles underpinning the organisation have been formalized, and Beijing has documented them at the United Nations. The document, titled China’s Position Paper on Global Cyber Governance in the Digital Intelligent Age, was published on July 23 and is centered around the themes of "respecting digital sovereignty and promoting development for all." The paper asserts that countries "should respect each other's digital sovereignty, and each has the right to choose its own path of digital technology development." This paper was presented at the first meeting of the UN Global Mechanism on information and communications technologies in international security, held in New York from July 20 to 24.

      This formulation isn't entirely new—China’s Global AI Governance Initiative, introduced at the Belt and Road Forum in October 2023, had previously urged states to "respect other countries' national sovereignty" while exporting AI products and services. What has shifted is that this phrase now carries institutional backing and stands in contrast to an American initiative. The State Department had prepared a letter to the 35 countries signed onto its AI Opportunity Statement, cautioning them against "duplicative initiatives" and stating that "to be part of everything is to be part of nothing."

      Two important notes accompany that draft letter, which is currently undated and, as of last week, unsent, and it does not specifically mention China or WAICO. However, the intent for allies to make choices is clear. Pax Silica, the group the letter aims to support, was founded in December 2025 by seven nations: the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, and Israel. It currently has 25 signatories, while the AI Opportunity Statement has been signed by 35 countries as of June.

      The numbers create a dilemma for Washington. WAICO’s 38 members and Pax Silica’s 25 do not represent exclusive lists, and that overlap is precisely what the draft letter is attempting to eliminate. Chinese analysts have identified the strategy, with Li Yong from the China Society for WTO Studies stating, “Washington wants a divided AI world by drawing a digital curtain to split the global market in two,” as reported by Global Times last weekend.

      Beijing's argument is supported less by treaties and more by usage statistics. The Qwen family of Alibaba has achieved three billion downloads in six months, resulting in over 300,000 derivative models, compared to 418 million for Google’s Gemma and 227 million for Meta’s Llama as reported by Hugging Face.

      Open weights represent a diplomatic approach that export controls struggle to achieve. Additionally, according to state media, China has committed to providing 5,000 AI training positions for developing nations, though this number has not been independently verified.

      Despite differing political views, there is shared terminology. Europe has devoted two years to advocating for its concept of digital sovereignty, which primarily involves control over its data and infrastructure rather than seeking freedom from other governments.

      There is also a theoretically neutral platform available. The UN established an independent scientific panel on AI and initiated a global dialogue on AI governance in August 2025, hosting the first dialogue in Geneva in July, while WAICO established its secretariat in Shanghai, and the American letter remains unwritten.