Xi Jinping To Open Shanghai AI Governance Summit For First Time

China’s 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference will open with Xi Jinping on stage for the first time, TNW reported, raising Shanghai’s annual AI event to a higher official level.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson announced Xi’s attendance on Monday.

WAIC is scheduled for 17 to 20 July, and the programme appears alongside a High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance.

Xi Jinping Keynote Brings WAIC To AI Governance

In previous years, China’s premier opened the World Artificial Intelligence Conference.

This time, Xi’s keynote is placed next to the high-level AI governance meeting.

Organisers expect more than 1,400 guests, including executives, investors and academics, according to TNW.

The preview lists 12 government ministries, eight national laboratories and more than 300 global product debuts as part of the event’s announced scale.

That governance meeting gives Beijing a diplomatic forum around the conference.

Its format is intended to convene delegations and more than 10 international organisations around a Chinese-drafted agenda, TNW noted.

Shanghai Hosts China’s AI Cooperation Proposal

China has been accelerating work on a World AI Cooperation Organization, a proposed international body that Beijing wants headquartered in Shanghai, TNW reported.

Analysts expect Xi to use the keynote to give that proposal more definition, though Beijing has not confirmed that he will do so.

Over the past decade, Shanghai has positioned itself as China’s AI capital through municipal funds, compute subsidies and a cluster of laboratories, the outlet wrote.

The preview also framed the keynote against technology-access tensions.

Beijing has restricted overseas access to its strongest models, while Washington has accused China of copying American models and has used export controls and restricted-entity lists in its AI policy, according to TNW.

Membership Evidence Remains Outside The Speech Preview

The conference preview cites Chinese labs shipping frontier-adjacent models at lower cost than American counterparts and describes DeepSeek as designing its own inference chip with SMIC to work around U.S. export controls.

Those claims remain part of the preview rather than a confirmed WAIC agenda item.

The opening ceremony is scheduled for Friday.

The preview does not name member countries for the proposed World AI Cooperation Organization, confirm a charter, or identify which delegations would support a Shanghai-based AI governance body.