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Cao Jiaxuan

As the United States and China consolidate their dominance in artificial intelligence, attention is turning to whether Europe can carve out a distinct third pole – a “G3” – or remain in Washington’s technological orbit.
The race is rapidly evolving into a contest over international order. In June, Washington signed up 10 more partners for its Pax Silica framework – designed to secure supply chains for key advanced technologies such as microchips and AI – bringing the total to 24.
Weeks later, 29 countries signed an agreement in Shanghai to establish the rival World AI Cooperation Organisation, a Chinese-led initiative pitched especially at the Global South.
According to the 2026 Global AI Innovation Index, produced by China’s Institute of Scientific and Technical Information and Peking University, the US and China remain far ahead of other countries.
The index, which used a range of criteria to assess 46 countries’ AI innovation and development, put the US well ahead with 78.44 points, with China closing the gap on 60.49. The third-placed country, Britain, was over 20 points behind on 39.99 with Germany and France in sixth and seventh place.
Stanford’s 2026 AI Index Report also put the US ahead, producing 59 notable AI models last year, compared with China’s 35 and two from Europe.
Against this backdrop, Beijing is actively pitching its open-source AI to European capitals as a cost-effective way to reduce reliance on US tech.
Last month China’s ambassador to Britain Zheng Zeguang called on the two countries to cooperate on the issue in an article for The Guardian, highlighting models such as DeepSeek as “global public goods” that lowered barriers to innovation.
In June, the country’s ambassador to the European Union Cai Run made a similar appeal in a speech at the Europe Forum in Brussels, saying China’s advantages in open-source AI models could be paired with Europe’s competitive edge in basic research and regulation.
From Beijing’s perspective, dialogue with European partners is crucial to preventing a complete US-China confrontation, according to Cui Hongjian, a research fellow at Beijing Foreign Studies University’s Country and Area Studies Academy.
“A so-called G2 [Group of 2] structure seems to be forming in the AI field,” Cui said, due to the US and China’s stronger “systemic capabilities”.


European capitals “acknowledge this disparity”, Cui said, but longer-term trends left open the possibility of a “G3”.
“While AI talks between China and the US are taking shape, Beijing also wants a similar mechanism with Europe,” he said, adding that China wanted a “balanced trilateral structure … rather than facing Washington alone while Europe turns into an American digital colony”.
Cui said Europe’s traditional reliance on “differentiated cooperation” – leveraging niche strengths such as regulation alongside foundational sciences – had undergone a major shift in recent years, “mainly due to disappointment with the US”.
To evolve from a bystander into a true “G3” player, Europe was now building its own “systemic capabilities” such as basic computing power and infrastructure. “However, it seems difficult to develop a comprehensive systemic capability that rivals that of the US and China in the short term,” Cui warned.
He argued that Europe could safeguard its technological sovereignty by adopting a model that was “compatible” with Chinese open-source infrastructure.
Some European companies have already adopted Chinese AI models to cut development costs and reduce reliance on US tech. Siemens is already using models such as DeepSeek and Z.ai, according to the Financial Times, which said it wanted “flexibility”.
But open-source models may not be enough to bridge Europe’s vast infrastructure deficit.
“A genuine third pole means owning the whole stack of chips, cloud, software, capital, energy, standards; not renting fragments of someone else’s,” said Sebastian Contin Trillo-Figueroa, a geopolitics strategist specialising in EU-Asia relations.
He described the landscape as an “orbital bipolarity”, where two centres of gravity pulled all other actors into their orbit. While Beijing’s open-source push cannot give European countries technological sovereignty, he said it could be a valuable bargaining chip against Washington.
He added that Europe’s real leverage lay not in moral leadership, but in high-value industrial assets – such as Dutch semiconductor equipment giant ASML – and rich proprietary data sets in areas such as healthcare, manufacturing, energy and aerospace.


“If I were to advise [European Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen, I would only deliver a single message: stop selling ethics, start selling machines,” he said.
James Downes, director of the Europe-Asia programme at the US-based Centre for Explanatory Research and Scientific Prediction, said heavy reliance on US cloud infrastructure had narrowed Europe’s options.
“Beijing’s open-source pitch may create tactical space for selective cooperation,” Downes said.
But he warned: “Without faster investment in [computing power], capital and scale, Europe and the UK are shrinking relative to both US and Chinese dominance. In essence, both Europe and the UK risk becoming passengers in the wider AI race.”


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The two big tech powers are well ahead of the competition. The question now is whether a third big player can emerge


The two big tech powers are well ahead of the competition. The question now is whether a third big player can emerge.


China is pitching its AI models to Europe, but is it enough to avoid 2-horse race with US?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The two big tech powers are well ahead of the competition. The question now is whether a third big player can emerge

The two big tech powers are well ahead of the competition. The question now is whether a third big player can emerge