World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization
Context
Len Liao:
"WAICO marks the moment when the global AI race moved beyond models, chips and computing power into institutional competition. By organizing cooperation around sovereign equality, development and capacity building, China is creating a vehicle that can connect open models, computing infrastructure, technical training and public-sector deployment across the Global South. The United States still controls much of the technological frontier. China is beginning to organize how the rest of the world reaches it."
(https://leonliao.substack.com/p/waico-the-global-ai-race-enters-the)
Status
Len Liao:
"July 16, 2026 may be remembered as the beginning of the institutional bifurcation of the global AI order. For the first time, China has transformed a global AI-governance initiative into an international organization founded on an intergovernmental agreement, with a governing council, member contributions and the potential for a permanent secretariat. One year after proposing the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization in Shanghai in July 2025, China has turned the initiative into an institutional entity.
The timing carries clear political significance. The signing ceremony took place one day before the opening of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference on July 17, where Xi Jinping is scheduled to deliver a keynote address. July 16 establishes the organization’s legal and institutional foundations. July 17 gives it political direction and a global narrative at the highest level of the Chinese state.
The global AI race is moving beyond models and semiconductors into organizational competition. WAICO opens a fourth battlefield: who organizes the global AI order, who defines the terms of cooperation, and who converts technological capacity into institutional influence."
(https://leonliao.substack.com/p/waico-the-global-ai-race-enters-the)