Xi calls for AI not controlled by a single country

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called in Shanghai for artificial intelligence not to be dominated by a single country and urged international cooperation to develop it. Delivered at one of China’s major technology gatherings, the message places AI governance in the context of geopolitical balance.

His remarks come as the United States and China compete over the building blocks of advanced AI: computing power, semiconductors, data, researchers and companies capable of training large language models. This is not merely a trade dispute. Whoever controls that infrastructure will wield considerable influence over which systems are deployed and under what rules.

From the promise of openness to the battle over chips

Xi’s call echoes a position Beijing has defended in international forums: AI should benefit all countries, including those without major data centres or a domestic semiconductor industry.

But that appeal for cooperation sits alongside increasingly fierce technological competition. Washington has imposed export controls on advanced chips and the tools needed to manufacture them, aiming to restrict China’s access to the computing capacity required to train leading-edge models. China, meanwhile, has stepped up support for domestic processor makers, cloud companies and model developers.

The result is a paradox. Governments talk about shared standards and reducing global risks while building supply chains and technology ecosystems that are less dependent on their rival. AI has become an arena where cooperation and competition are advancing simultaneously.

The battle is also over the rules

Leading in AI does not simply mean having the most capable model. It also means taking part in decisions on safety, privacy, intellectual property, military use and access to digital infrastructure.

China already has specific rules for certain generative AI services. Providers must meet security and content obligations for services available to the public, and the rules require content to comply with requirements set by Chinese authorities. The European Union, meanwhile, has adopted its AI Act with a risk-based approach. So far, the United States has opted for a more fragmented mix of federal and state measures and corporate commitments.

These differences matter because national rules can ultimately have an impact beyond their borders. A company seeking to operate in several markets will need to adapt its products, content filters, auditing systems and data policies to different regulatory frameworks.

What it means for countries and companies

The push for less concentrated AI responds to a real concern: training frontier models requires very large investments and access to vast quantities of specialised chips. That leaves much of the world as a consumer of technology designed in the United States or China, rather than a participant in its development.

For countries with fewer resources, the promised cooperation will only have value if it translates into effective access to computing power, technical training, models that work in local languages and the ability to decide how their populations’ data is used. Publishing a model or offering a cloud platform alone does not resolve that dependency.

For European and Spanish companies, the split between technology blocs could raise the cost of accessing infrastructure and force them to choose providers on criteria that are no longer purely technical or economic. The origin of chips, where data is hosted and which jurisdiction regulates a model will become increasingly important business decisions.

The international cooperation Beijing is calling for will therefore have to be measured against the concrete interests of the major players. The next challenge will not be declaring that AI should be global, but agreeing on who can build it, audit it and benefit from it.