Xi Jinping's new AI bloc: China launches 'World AI Body' with Pakistan and Russia in, India out

On July 16 in Shanghai, twenty-nine countries signed the founding agreement of a new world body for artificial intelligence, built by China, headquartered in China, and launched by Xi Jinping himself. Pakistan signed. Russia signed. Brazil and South Africa signed. India did not.

What Is WAICO

The World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation, WAICO, is an intergovernmental organisation headquartered in Shanghai, formally established on July 16 and unveiled at the World AI Conference the following day. Its founding accord commits members to promoting international cooperation and global governance of AI under the principles of the UN Charter, with the stated aim of ensuring the technology develops in a direction that is beneficial, safe and equitable for humanity. Reports from the ceremony say UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attended, a significant nod of legitimacy for a Chinese-convened body.

Xi Jinping set the tone: ‘AI development should not be a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation.’ He also urged members to jointly oppose what he called the overstretching of national security concepts in AI, an unmistakable jab at Washington's export controls on advanced chips.

Who Is In, And Who Is Not

The founding membership tilts heavily toward the Global South: reports name Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Brazil, South Africa, Senegal, Belarus, Serbia, Cuba and Venezuela among the 29, with ten African and twelve Asian countries signing on.

One absence stands out above all others. Every founding member of BRICS, Brazil, Russia, China, South Africa, has signed on to WAICO. Except India. New Delhi's chair in Shanghai stayed empty while Islamabad took a founding seat.

Why China Built It

Analysts read WAICO as Beijing's move to institutionalise its influence over the rules of the global digital economy, promoting a state-centric model of AI governance that appeals to developing nations, and building a platform to shape AI policy discussions at the UN level.

The timing is not accidental. WAICO arrives as American export controls on advanced AI chips tighten around China: rules announced in May 2026 require licenses for any Blackwell-class Nvidia chip transfer to Chinese entities, and US officials said this month that only a ‘trivial’ number of H200 chips have shipped under the limited licenses approved. Locked out of the hardware club, Beijing is building a governance club and inviting everyone Washington's rules leave behind.

And the diplomacy has a technology twin. On the same day WAICO's agreement was signed, Chinese startup Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, the largest open-weight AI model ever built, its full weights free for the world to download from July 27. Open models for the world's developers, a governance bloc for the world's governments, the technology and the rulebook, both made in China.

The India Question

India's absence reads as a deliberate choice, and New Delhi's strategic establishment is openly wary. India's former Permanent Representative to the United Nations has warned that WAICO could end up determining the ‘new global AI order’ and that ‘India must be vigilant.’ The concern is straightforward: a Chinese-headquartered body writing global AI rules, with Pakistan at the founding table, is not a forum where New Delhi starts with influence.

India's own AI debate is meanwhile dominated by sovereignty. Policy commentary in New Delhi this month has centred on ‘sovereign AI’ the push to build domestic capability rather than depend on foreign models, whether American or Chinese. India has the world's largest developer population outside the US and a fast-growing AI startup ecosystem, but no frontier model of its own.

That leaves New Delhi with a genuine dilemma. Staying out of WAICO keeps India clear of Chinese-led rule-making, but it also means the rules get written without India in the room, in a body more than a fifth of the world's countries have already joined. Joining would legitimise a Beijing-convened order that India, four years after Galwan, has every strategic reason to distrust.

What It Means

The world's AI order is visibly splitting into blocs. On one side: American chip controls, closed frontier models, and alliances of advanced economies. On the other: Chinese open-weight models given away free, and now a formal governance organisation headquartered in Shanghai, recruiting the Global South state by state.

The countries in the middle, the ones choosing which stack to build on and which table to sit at, are the prize. Twenty-nine of them just chose Shanghai.

India is betting it can write its own rules and build its own capability instead. Whether an empty chair in Shanghai proves to be strategic patience or a strategic mistake is a question that will take years to answer, but the table has been set, and the seat next to Pakistan is filled.