Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at the 2025 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Gyeongju, South Korea.Credit: Yonhap via AP/Alamy
Despite risks ranging from worsening inequality to causing an existential catastrophe, the world has yet to agree on regulations to control artificial intelligence. Although there is a patchwork of national and regional regulations, binding rules are still being developed for many countries.
In October, at a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated his country’s proposal to establish a body known as the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), which would bring countries together as a step toward creating a global governance system for AI.
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The proposal is part of a broader push to spearhead efforts to govern AI, in contrast to a U.S. approach focused on deregulation. When it comes to transparency and AI policy, “China is the good guy right now,” Wendy Hall, a computer scientist at the University of Southampton, UK, told reporters at an event in London in October.
There are many hurdles in the way of reaching a binding intergovernmental agreement on AI, but some advocates say it is possible, comparing the technology to other risky but beneficial endeavors for which agreements exist, such as nuclear power and aviation. Nature looks at China’s approach, what a global AI governing body might look like and the likelihood of success.
How is China’s AI ecosystem different from other countries?
Encouraged by the government, Chinese companies tend to release models as open weight, meaning they can be downloaded and built upon. And compared to Western countries, China is focusing less on creating machines that can outsmart humans – often called artificial general intelligence – and is instead focusing on a race to use AI to boost economic growth. This is exemplified by a policy introduced in August called AI+, says Kwan Yee Ng, who heads international AI management at Concordia AI, a Beijing-based consultancy focused on AI safety.
How is China dealing with AI regulation?
China was one of the first countries to introduce AI-specific regulations from 2022, and for example has extensive rules on harmful content, privacy and data security. Developers of public AI-powered services should let Chinese regulators test their systems before deploying them, Ng says. The result is that models like those developed by Hangzhou-based company DeepSeek, which shot to fame earlier this year with its R1 model, are among “the most regulated in the world,” says Joanna Bryson, a computer scientist and researcher in AI ethics at the Hertie School in Berlin. Still, authorities often take a soft approach to enforcing those regulations, says Angela Zhang, a rights researcher and specialist in AI regulation at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
In contrast, the United States does not have comprehensive legislation on AI at the federal level, and in January President Donald Trump rescinded an executive order aimed at ensuring the safety of AI. He has positioned his administration as pro-industry, suggesting in a social media post last month that it would add a clause to a federal bill to prevent states from regulating AI. The European Union’s approach has been to classify AI systems by risk level, with different rules regarding transparency and oversight at each level, and obligations that came into effect in August, targeting the most powerful AI systems. The UK government, meanwhile, has put plans to introduce comprehensive AI legislation on hold until next year at the earliest.
What international legislation exists to regulate AI?
Very little. The only legally binding international regulations come from the Council of Europe, an international organization of European member states, separate from the European Union, which established its Framework Convention on AI in May 2024. The treaty obliges each signatory country to fulfill its broad obligations – such as ensuring that AI activities are in line with human rights. — through their national laws. But there are no sanctions or a supranational enforcement body, says Lucia Velasco, an economist and researcher at the Oxford Martin School’s AI Governance Initiative, based in New York.
Companies and countries have also signed several non-binding agreements, such as the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, the OECD AI Principles and the Bletchley Declaration, an international agreement signed by 28 countries at the UK AI Safety Summit in 2023. Several expert groups have produced documents outlining the risks, one of the most prominent being the International AI Safety Report. The United Nations (UN) is conducting a “dialogue” process and has established a scientific panel to guide countries’ regulatory efforts.
What has China proposed?
WAICO would be a way for countries to coordinate rules for AI governance while “fully respecting differences in national policies and practices” and standing up for the Global South, Chinese officials say. China has proposed locating the agency’s headquarters in Shanghai, but other details remain uncertain.
It seems unlikely that WAICO will directly govern AI in an enforceable way (and China has said it supports a UN approach to governing global AI), but it could be a route for countries to gradually unite around a framework.
Xi’s call to set up WAICO was at least the fourth attempt by a Chinese official in four months, suggesting the idea is important to the government, Ng said. One reason is commercial, says Zhang. “China’s ability to set standards helps Chinese product distribution around the world,” she says.
This move also gives China a diplomatic cachet. “China is trying to be like an (older) brother to the Global South, arguing ‘we should also have our voice in the governance of AI and not be dictated to,’” says Zhang.
What would a global form of governance look like?
We don’t know. AI safety experts often cite the regulation of nuclear energy and the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency as an analogy, Ng says. The standards set by the UN agency are non-binding, but are supplemented by legally binding treaties it helped establish, such as the Convention on Nuclear Safety.
