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Dulue Mbachu

The global race for artificial intelligence has transformed into a direct contest of governance, with the United States and China actively exporting rival models of technology, funding and regulation to the rest of the world.
In the West African state of Burkina Faso, dozens of young people gather at a training centre in the capital, Ouagadougou, to learn the basics of digital technology and AI, in a US-sponsored effort to develop local digital skills based on the American tech ecosystem.
At the Suzhou Industrial Park Institute of Vocational Technology in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, trainees from Indonesia and Laos learn about the digital transformation and intelligent industrial automation, along with the Chinese perspective on AI.
As the AI race intensifies, these two leading nations in the field are competing over whose approach will dominate globally. It is a trajectory that raises pertinent questions about the future of AI governance and the risks posed by the technology.
China’s push to address the global gaps in AI governance is in the spotlight at a high-level forum that opened in Shanghai on Friday with a personal appearance by President Xi Jinping. The four-day event concludes on Monday.


Xi urged the world to adopt an inclusive approach, encouraging collaboration without rivalries in his Friday speech.
“AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation,” he said, adding that safety risks must be contained.
He also promised 5,000 “opportunities in AI training and seminar programmes”, and pledged to work with global organisations, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the League of Arab States and the African Union to develop international AI application cooperation centres.
It was the first time that the Chinese leader attended the World AI Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance since the annual event was first held in 2018.
Ahead of the conference, Kyle Chan, a fellow with the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Centre in Washington, pointed out that the two countries faced similar challenges.
“Both the US and China are trying to find a balance between supporting AI development and mitigating AI-related risks,” he told the South China Morning Post.
“Xi’s appearance at this year’s World AI Conference in Shanghai signals the importance that China places on AI.”
Chan said that China had been active in pushing for a global AI governance framework, even going as far as setting up the World AI Cooperation Organisation in Shanghai.
Though AI cooperation was among the issues US President Donald Trump was supposed to discuss with Xi during his May visit to Beijing, many details of that conversation remain unknown.




Gaps are likely to persist between the US and China as they engage in formal dialogues on AI governance, with each trying to win the other over to their viewpoint, according to Chan.
“AI is absolutely central to both Beijing and Washington,” he said. “The question will be whether the two AI superpowers can cooperate on this transformative technology that is reshaping the world.”
Washington and Beijing have adopted distinct strategies to the development of AI, with the US pursuing a market-driven approach while China’s preference is an open-source environment.
In the US, AI development is backed by huge outlays of venture capital in an approach that brings together the country’s technology giants and researchers in top universities with the backing of the government.
The flagship US$500 billion Stargate Project – a government-supported joint venture that includes SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and investment company MGX – is designed to give the US global leadership in the AI race through a national network of data centres.
China’s approach, articulated in its five-year plans, emphasises “AI for good” and “AI for all” as undergirding principles and favours cost-effective models such as the domestically developed DeepSeek. It also wants to see a quick deployment of AI to industries and services.
In both models, regulation and governance remain a work in progress. So far, the US has no federal law that addresses all the issues concerning AI. Applicable rules are vested in several federal agencies that swing between excessive restriction and deregulation.
In China, regulations and governance are run by the Cyberspace Administration of China. It has taken a targeted approach that applies specific measures to given scenarios, aimed at making AI useful and safe, without threatening social stability.
Rival visions
Both countries are exporting their rival visions for the technology to the rest of the world, with the US treating AI as a national security asset and banning chip and software exports to certain countries, such as China.
Beijing has responded to these export controls by turning to open-source software and cheaper hardware, seeking partnerships in the Global South with few or no political strings attached, and positioning itself as a responsible AI user.
For both countries, the competition is unfolding as a global race to build more data centres and expand the power grids needed to sustain them.
US companies including Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta are working with infrastructure companies such as Equinix and Digital Realty to roll out new data centres in all regions of the world.
China is doing the same under its Belt and Road Initiative, driven by the needs of Huawei, ZTE, Alibaba, Tencent and other tech companies, which are working with data centre builders including Chindata Group and GDS Holdings.
Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
While the US and China have acknowledged the need for some cooperation to mitigate AI risks, they have yet to produce modalities they can agree upon.
China stresses multilateral cooperation
Both tech leaders were among the countries represented at the inaugural UN Global AI Dialogue in Geneva on July 7 to discuss governance. AI-assisted cyberattacks, along with its misuse in biological and chemical research, were among the concerns raised, along with the need for guidelines.
At the conference, China’s Industry and Information Technology Minister Li Lecheng stressed the importance of multilateral cooperation on AI safety. While innovation should be encouraged, collaboration was vital to strengthen governance and ensure that AI benefited all, he said.
Katie Strickland, White House senior adviser for international science and technology policy, told the conference that the US government was working with lawmakers on a national regulatory policy to protect children, discourage censorship and respect intellectual property.
In doing this, it was relying on the leadership of the tech industry, she said.
“Industry is intimately aware of the state, scope, and trajectory of AI developments. Government is not. Voluntary cooperation between the two is the only AI security approach agile enough to meet challenges as they arise without stifling innovation.”


In some Washington policy circles, Beijing’s push to strengthen AI governance is viewed with suspicion – an attempt to impose its vision on the world.
In an analysis published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on May 21, Arindrajit Basu observed that “China views the governance of AI through the lens of entrenching state control, rather than safeguarding individual liberties”.
China’s aim was a global diffusion of its values and standards, he wrote.


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Will the world choose Washington’s market-driven approach or Beijing’s open-source model that aims to be accessible and safe?


US-China AI rivalry becomes a battle to export competing tech governance visions

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Will the world choose Washington’s market-driven approach or Beijing’s open-source model that aims to be accessible and safe?

Will the world choose Washington’s market-driven approach or Beijing’s open-source model that aims to be accessible and safe?