President Xi Jinping attended the opening ceremony of the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai on July 17 and delivered a keynote address titled "Joining Hands to Build a Just and Equitable System for Global AI Governance"4,3. The appearance marked Xi's first in-person attendance at the annual event since it was launched in 20181.
The conference, held from July 17–20 in Shanghai, is China's largest annual AI industry gathering8. Xi had previously sent a congratulatory letter to the inaugural 2018 WAIC, where Vice Premier Liu He delivered a speech. From 2019 to 2023, the most senior in-person attendee was the Shanghai Party Secretary, and in 2024 and 2025, Premier Li Qiang delivered opening remarks. Xi's personal attendance represents a further escalation in the political caliber of the event.
Xi's keynote called for international cooperation in AI development7 and addressed governance challenges. The speech included an explicit reference to "loss of control" risks specific to AI — described by DigiChina analysts as his first known public mention of such risks in an AI context2. Xi also called for new AI laws and regulations, technical risk-monitoring systems, and emergency response mechanisms. He reiterated China's commitment to open-source AI and said that developing and deploying AI should not erode or undermine the diversity of world civilizations or the cultural uniqueness of other nations.
The conference took place against a backdrop of intensifying U.S.-China technology competition. Washington maintains strict export controls on advanced semiconductors and restricts overseas access to top AI models. China has used the WAIC to showcase ambitions extending beyond foundation models to autonomous agents, scientific research, humanoid robots, and consumer devices.
Several new institutional developments accompanied the conference. The Shanghai-based World AI Cooperation Organization was established. The Cyberspace Administration of China and the National Development and Reform Commission released a new initiative on global governance of AI agents, which includes a section on respecting diverse governance models. Moonshot AI released its Kimi K3 model around the time of the conference.
The 2026 WAIC features more than 140 thematic forums. Among them, Concordia AI is hosting the Frontier and Agentic AI Safety Forum on July 19 as an official part of the conference. Participants include Alondra Nelson, former acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Amandeep Singh Gill, United Nations Secretary-General's Envoy on Technology; Zhou Bowen of Shanghai AI Laboratory; and Xue Lan of Tsinghua University. Senior experts from Alibaba, the Frontier Model Forum, Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority, Hugging Face, and the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology are also participating, alongside former researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic.
Xi took a group photo with heads of state and government, heads of international organizations, and heads of delegations from participating countries at the opening ceremony. Rebecca Arcesati of the Mercator Institute for China Studies described Xi's speech as "one of his most significant public interventions on AI to date".
ANALYSIS Xi's personal elevation of the WAIC — from congratulatory letter in 2018 to keynote address in 2026 — tracks a steady escalation of political attention to AI at the highest level of the Chinese government. His explicit mention of loss-of-control risks, combined with calls for new laws and emergency response mechanisms, places safety language alongside China's established emphasis on AI development and open-source commitments. The simultaneous launch of the World AI Cooperation Organization and the agentic AI governance initiative positions Beijing to shape international AI norms, particularly as U.S. export controls continue to define the competitive landscape.