China narrows AI gap, challenges US influence

Published 21 July 2026 · tech

At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, Beijing showcased advances in AI while promoting its vision of open-source development and global governance. As China

At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, Beijing showcased advances in AI while promoting its vision of open-source development and global governance. As China narrows the artificial intelligence (AI) gap with the United States, Beijing is promoting a narrative centered on "open source" and "inclusive AI" as an argument for its vision of global governance. During his keynote speech at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai on Friday, Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed China's ambition to take a leading role in setting global standards in AI. He criticized what he described as the "overextension of the concept of national security." Xi did not openly reference the United States. However, Beijing's effort to position itself as an advocate of a new AI order and challenge US dominance was unmistakable. This year's Shanghai summit sent several important signals, says Rogier Creemers, assistant professor at Leiden University specializing in China's digital technology policy. The WAIC indicates that artificial intelligence is now one of Beijing's political priorities, and that China intends to compete with the United States by supporting open-source AI models and promoting AI-driven industrialization, Creemers told DW. He also noted China hopes to win support from countries in the Global South for this effort. Beijing closing the AI gap China is steadily narrowing the gap with the United States in AI model development, and its efforts at AI application in industrial processes are slowly maturing. China's President Xi Jinping said artificial intelligence should not be dominated by a single country Image: Ng Han Guan/REUTERS Chinese AI model developers have continued to keep pace on the global stage, largely by training open-weight models on limited but advanced computer hardware, Paul Triolo, senior vice president for China and tech policy lead at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, told DW.

Triolo believes deployment of AI across Chinese enterprises may be progressing faster than in the United States. In addition, there is less fear of AI among the Chinese population than there is in the US, facilitating more rapid uptake of AI applications at the consumer level. Earlier this year, Chinese state media claimed that the performance gap between Chinese and US AI models had "largely disappeared." Several experts broadly agreed with this assessment, saying that certain benchmark tests of China's large language models (LLMs) such as GLM-5.2 and Kimi K3 showed the gap narrowing or even fully closing. For most applications, Triolo noted, China's leading open-weight AI models are cheaper to run and more than capable of handling most tasks. At the same time, advanced proprietary models from leading US companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google still retain advantages in areas such as security and scalability. Has the US 'AI firewall' worked? In January 2025, the US Commerce Department expanded AI-related export controls through its "Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion," covering advanced computing chips, certain AI model weights and access to large-scale AI computing infrastructure. The US also boosted export controls on advanced chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment intended for China. Laila Khawaja, research director at Gavekal Research, told DW that the US has been partially successful. The controls have indeed impacted China's ability to manufacture chips domestically, cheaply, and at scale. As for export controls on advanced AI chips, however, Khawaja notes that a significant amount of chips is still entering China through the gray market, while Chinese firms can still access computing resources through overseas cloud services. According to Triolo, the evidence so far suggests the US strategy of slowing down China's advanced AI development has failed at many levels.