On July 16, 2026, twenty-nine countries signed the agreement establishing the World AI Cooperation Organization (WAIC) in Shanghai. With the United States, the major European Union powers, Japan, and South Korea all absent, the organization has confronted from the very beginning the paradox of "global AI governance without the world's biggest AI players." From the geopolitical configuration of its twenty-nine founding members, to the coincidence of DeepSeek's valuation surfacing on the same day, to the collision between two AI orders — the founding of WAIC is a significant variable, but it is not the final answer.
The signing ceremony for the agreement establishing the World AI Cooperation Organization was held in Shanghai on July 16, 2026. Representatives of twenty-nine countries signed the agreement as founding member states, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres along with other state and international organization representatives attended the ceremony. The date itself carried layered significance: it fell on the eve of the opening of the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, and on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the signing of the Sino-Russian Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation.
This is no ordinary act of international institution-building. Set against the current landscape of AI governance, it represents a significant variable in the global AI order.
The Agreement and the Organizational Architecture
According to statements released by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the agreement defines the World AI Cooperation Organization as an independent intergovernmental international organization. It follows the purposes of the UN Charter, embraces the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefits, and upholds a human-centered approach. Its aim is to promote international cooperation and global governance on artificial intelligence, ensuring that AI develops in a healthy and orderly fashion along a beneficial, safe, and equitable trajectory. The organization will be headquartered in Shanghai, China.
The twenty-nine founding member states span a geographic arc from Latin America to Southeast Asia, mixing developed and developing economies. China and Russia are widely seen as the drivers of the agreement.
Why Founded at This Particular Moment
By 2026, the competitive landscape of artificial intelligence has already taken on a distinct shape.
Deepening Concentration of Technology
The mainstream narrative of global AI has until now been rooted in an older technological order — one in which core technology is held by a small handful of players, while everyone else can obtain products and services but struggles to accumulate technological capability of their own. Closed models, paid APIs, restricted compute, locked-in ecosystems: the higher the concentration of technology, the more entrenched the dependency relationships of the global AI industry become.
The Contest over Governance Discourse
In the window during which the rules of global AI governance are still taking shape, whoever builds an international framework first seizes the power to define the rules. By contrast, the West has so far relied mainly on corporate self-regulation and domestic legislation for AI governance, and has yet to produce a multilateral framework commanding broad international consensus.
What the Global South Wants
Most developing countries are neither the creators of AI technology nor the makers of its rules — yet they are the ones who bear the consequences of its application. A multilateral framework capable of balancing the interests of technology-exporting and technology-importing countries holds real, practical appeal for the Global South.
The founding of WAIC is not a response to problems already on the table; it fills an institutional vacuum that plainly exists. In the window before the rules of global AI governance are set, the countries that build the framework first will claim the power to define those rules.
Signals from the Same Day
Several things that happened on the same day stand in an intertextual relationship with the founding of WAIC.
DeepSeek's Valuation Surfaces
A filing by Kairun Co., a Chinese listed company, inadvertently disclosed DeepSeek's valuation — roughly 350.8 billion yuan. DeepSeek is a Chinese AI firm whose open-source model strategy has exerted broad influence across the global developer community. The "open, full-factor AI ecosystem" that WAIC champions echoes DeepSeek's business model: at the core of both is lowering the threshold for using AI technology, so that more people participate rather than watch from the sidelines.
The Foreign Ministry Answers the Open-Source AI "Trap" Thesis
Some foreign media outlets have portrayed China's provision of open-source AI models as a "trap." Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian explicitly rejected drawing ideological dividing lines and imposing technological blockades, stating that China is ready to share its experience with all parties. The response points directly at the old order that WAIC seeks to displace — an alternative flying the banner of open source and sharing.
The Geographic Configuration of the Twenty-Nine
Russia's Sputnik news agency noted that the map of signatory states stretches from Latin America to Southeast Asia, with China and Russia leading the agreement and more than twenty countries following behind them. Notably, the founding membership does not include the United States, the major EU powers, Japan, or South Korea — precisely the economies with the most advanced AI technology today.
The composition of WAIC's membership is itself a geopolitical signal about the relationship between "the existing AI order" and "another AI order." Without the United States, the EU, Japan, and South Korea, the organization faces a structural contradiction from day one: can global AI governance truly work without the world's biggest AI players?
The Questions This Framework Faces
The founding of WAIC is not without its challenges.
The limits of participation. Because the founding members exclude the economies at the frontier of AI technology, the organization confronts from the outset the paradox of "global AI governance without the world's biggest AI players." Whether its rule-making will carry practical binding force, and whether it can influence the direction of global AI development, depends on whether it can draw in more key players down the road.
Its relationship with existing governance mechanisms. Multilateral discussion mechanisms on AI governance already exist at the UN level, and the European Union is pushing ahead with its AI Act. Whether WAIC stands in a relationship of parallelism, competition, or complementarity with these existing multilateral mechanisms remains unclear — the language of the agreement points to "an independent intergovernmental international organization," a positioning that itself suggests distance from the incumbent mechanisms.
The test of execution. The vitality of any international organization lies not in a single sheet of paper, but in the practical value it can deliver to its members. WAIC's framework of "extensive consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefits" will have to prove its feasibility through concrete projects — shared compute, mutual recognition of standards, safety norms.
The Bigger Picture: The Collision of Two AI Orders
Set back into the larger picture, the founding of WAIC represents more than the birth of a new organization; it marks an ontological shift: AI governance is turning from "a technical problem about technical standards" into "an order problem about who writes the rules."
The logic of the old order is this: the holders of core technology supply the products, and everyone else accepts the rules. The logic of the new order is this: rules are made collectively through a multilateral framework, giving more people the capacity to take part in technological development and governance.
Which of these two logics will dominate the future direction of global AI — on that question, the founding of WAIC is a significant variable, but it is not the final answer.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian, answering a reporter's question: "China is ready to share its experience with all parties, and opposes drawing ideological dividing lines and imposing technological blockades." — Ministry of Foreign Affairs regular press conference, July 16, 2026