China Bids for Global AI Leadership With Breakthrough Model, Third World Outreach

Communist China’s president and ruling party chief, Xi Jinping, is using a weekend tech conference at Shanghai to position his country as the champion of developing countries hoping not to be left behind by the artificial intelligence revolution.Speaking on the same day that Beijing unveiled its most advanced AI model yet — rivaling the ground-breaking frontier models being developed by America’s top AI companies — Mr. Xi promised benefits including AI training and seminar programs for thousands of persons in developing countries.“We often say in China, ‘A single string cannot make music, and a single tree does not make a forest.’ AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country but a symphony of international cooperation,” he said Friday in what appeared to be a slap at America’s more restrictive approach. The remarks were translated by the Communist Party-owned China Daily.Mr. Xi was speaking at the weekend-long World Artificial Intelligence Conference, where his country unveiled Kimi K3, an AI model that experts quoted by Bloomberg say will perform on a par with OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 and approach Anthropic’s frontier Fable model.More significantly for developing countries hoping to climb on the AI bandwagon, Kimi K3 — like other Chinese models — operates on an “open-weight” system, meaning that users will be able to download, run, and customize the underlying software on their own servers. That differs from the proprietary, closed-source models being developed by American companies.Adding to Kimi K3’s appeal, customers will likely be able to use it for one-third to one-fifth of the cost of top American models like GPT 5.6 Sol or Claude Fable 5.The model’s release amounts to a major step in the race between America and China for AI dominance, with American officials fearing that if China prevails, it could reshape global power structures, undermine democratic values, and compromise American national security.In his remarks at Shanghai, Mr. Xi stressed China’s commitment to openness in AI development, portraying the country as being best able to ensure that the benefits of AI are shared among the world’s countries.“In China’s view, all countries should take a people-centered approach and develop AI for the positive and for good. We should ensure that AI is an important driver for shared prosperity and common security. We should join hands to build a just and equitable system for global AI governance,” he said.Putting organizational heft behind the president’s rhetoric, China this week formally launched the World AI Cooperation Organization, or WAICO, whose stated goals include helping developing countries to become active “co-creators” through technology transfers and localized workforce training. Among its 29 original members are Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan, South Africa, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, and Laos.The organization is seen as a direct rival to the American-led Pax Silica, a network focused on securing AI infrastructure, including semiconductor supply chains, rare earth minerals, and advanced cloud data centers. That group’s members include the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Australia, Singapore, and the European Union.

China Bids for Global AI Leadership With Breakthrough Model, Third World Outreach

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