Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to use China’s flagship artificial intelligence conference this week to unveil a broader vision for global AI governance while showcasing the country’s rapid progress toward technological self-sufficiency, highlighting Beijing’s ambition to challenge U.S. leadership in both AI technology and the rules that govern it.
Xi’s appearance at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai on Friday, his first attendance at the annual event, underpins the importance China now places on AI. The conference comes as Washington and Beijing prepare for their first government-level AI talks under U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and as both powers compete to shape the future of artificial intelligence.
The July 17-20 gathering is expected to combine major technology launches with diplomatic initiatives, boosting China’s dual strategy of reducing dependence on U.S. technology while positioning itself as a leading voice on global AI governance.
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One of the conference’s biggest announcements will be Huawei’s public unveiling of the Atlas 950 SuperPoD, its most advanced large-scale AI computing system to date. The system is designed for training and deploying next-generation AI models and links thousands of Huawei’s Ascend AI processors through high-speed interconnects so they function as a unified computing cluster.
The launch represents one of the clearest demonstrations yet that Chinese companies are making progress in building AI infrastructure without relying on Nvidia’s most advanced processors, access to which has been increasingly restricted by U.S. export controls.
Huawei’s latest system is aimed squarely at one of China’s biggest strategic vulnerabilities: dependence on foreign AI hardware.
As Washington has tightened restrictions on advanced semiconductor exports, Beijing has accelerated investment across its domestic AI ecosystem, including chips, networking equipment, software frameworks and cloud infrastructure.
The Atlas 950 signals that Huawei is attempting to provide an end-to-end domestic alternative capable of supporting large foundation models and enterprise AI workloads.
Deepseek Highlights Growing Domestic AI Ecosystem
The conference will also showcase how China’s AI software ecosystem is increasingly adapting to domestically produced hardware. DeepSeek’s latest V4 foundation model has been optimized to run entirely on clusters powered by Huawei’s Ascend processors, demonstrating that Chinese developers are reducing reliance not only on Nvidia chips but also on software ecosystems built around U.S. hardware.
Several other Chinese semiconductor companies, including Biren and MetaX, are also expected to unveil new “supernode” AI computing clusters during the conference, underscoring Beijing’s push to develop multiple domestic suppliers rather than relying on a single national champion.
The rapid expansion of indigenous AI infrastructure underlines China’s long-term objective of creating a fully self-sufficient AI supply chain spanning chips, servers, operating software and large language models.
Beyond technology, WAIC has become an important diplomatic platform. The conference follows a United Nations AI dialogue last week, where the United States and China presented sharply contrasting approaches to regulating artificial intelligence.
Washington noted that excessive regulation risks slowing innovation and technological breakthroughs, while Beijing promoted affordable, open-source AI models as a means of reducing global inequality in access to advanced technologies.
Against that backdrop, analysts say WAIC is evolving from an industry conference into a forum where China seeks to shape international AI policy.
“Against this backdrop, WAIC has become more than a technology showcase; it is now a geopolitical stage where Beijing seeks to articulate its vision of AI as both a national priority and a diplomatic instrument,” said George Chen, chair of digital practice at the Asia Group.
All these are unfolding as Washington and Beijing are preparing for their first formal AI discussions under the Trump administration, making China’s messaging at WAIC an early indication of its negotiating priorities.
Xi Positions AI As China’s Next Industrial Revolution
Xi has repeatedly identified artificial intelligence as central to China’s long-term development strategy. In a January speech, he described AI as an “epoch-making, major technological transformation following the steam engine,” placing it alongside the defining technological revolutions that reshaped the global economy.
China has incorporated AI into its broader industrial policy, viewing the technology as critical to boosting productivity, modernizing manufacturing, strengthening national security and reducing dependence on foreign technologies. Rather than concentrating AI development within a handful of technology firms, Beijing has emphasized integrating AI throughout the economy, including industrial production, healthcare, education, finance, and public services.
That move aligns with China’s broader pursuit of technological self-reliance as geopolitical tensions with the United States continue to reshape global technology supply chains.
A major diplomatic focus at this year’s conference is expected to be China’s proposal for a World AI Cooperation Organization (WAICO). Beijing first proposed establishing the organization during last year’s WAIC, although no governments have formally announced membership.
The conference coincides with a High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance in Shanghai, where officials are expected to provide updates on both WAICO and China’s broader Global AI Governance Initiative.
The proposed organization reflects Beijing’s effort to build international institutions that could influence global AI standards, particularly among emerging economies that may not fully align with U.S. or European regulatory approaches.
China is also expected to use the conference to promote its growing portfolio of open-source AI models as affordable alternatives to proprietary Western systems. Chinese policymakers believe that open-source models lower costs, expand access and allow developing countries to participate more fully in the AI economy.
A commentary published this week by the People’s Daily reinforced that message.
“The development of AI must never move toward a technological monopoly that walls itself in, but should always be anchored to the fundamental goal of serving humanity,” the newspaper wrote.
The strategy has gained traction in parts of Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, where lower-cost Chinese AI models are viewed as attractive alternatives for governments and businesses seeking to deploy AI without paying premium prices for Western platforms.
An Asian diplomat told Reuters that China has increasingly positioned itself as an advocate for countries seeking greater participation in the AI revolution.
“China has been making inroads with Southeast Asian countries in terms of AI capacity-building, and portrays itself as speaking up for developing countries who are being left behind in the AI race,” the diplomat said.
Global participation, limited U.S. presence
The conference is expected to attract senior political and scientific leaders from around the world. Attendees include United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Thailand’s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul. Nine recipients of the Turing Award and Nobel Prize, including deep learning pioneers Yoshua Bengio and Richard Sutton, are also scheduled to participate.
Notably, however, major U.S. technology companies are expected to have only limited representation, reflecting the increasingly fragmented nature of global AI cooperation as geopolitical competition intensifies.
Alongside Huawei’s AI infrastructure announcements, Chinese media report that several consumer AI products will debut during the conference, including AI agent smartphones developed by ZTE-owned Nubia and AI startup StepFun.
Together, the product launches and policy initiatives show that, rather than competing solely on large language models, China is simultaneously investing across the full AI value chain, from semiconductor design and computing infrastructure to consumer devices, open-source software and international governance.