The 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai served as more than a showcase for China’s latest models and hardware. On its opening day, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released an international action plan on artificial intelligence ethics governance, one of the most substantive governance documents China has produced on the subject, and it is explicitly framed as a contribution to the global, rather than merely domestic, AI policy debate.
The plan, reported by China Daily, is designed to help implement commitments made under the United Nations’ Pact for the Future and its annex, the Global Digital Compact. Its release at WAIC, an event that drew delegations from dozens of countries and saw 29 nations sign the founding charter of the World AI Cooperation Organization, signals Beijing’s intent to position itself as a constructive architect of international AI governance norms, not merely a rule-taker.
What the Plan Actually Says
The action plan is structured around several interconnected focus areas. It calls for ethical governance to be embedded throughout the full lifecycle of AI development, from data collection and model training through to deployment and decommissioning. It advocates for risk classification and tiered prevention, meaning that higher-risk applications should face proportionally stricter oversight, a principle that echoes elements of the European Union’s AI Act while differing in its implementation philosophy.
The document also calls for the development of agile governance mechanisms — a recognition that static regulations quickly become obsolete in a field evolving as rapidly as AI. Rather than prescribing fixed rules, the plan encourages iterative policy development that can adapt as capabilities and risks change. Alongside this, it emphasizes the importance of building coordinated industrial ecosystems in which developers, deployers, and regulators share responsibility for safe and ethical AI.
Perhaps most notably for an international document, the plan explicitly addresses the need to help developing countries strengthen their capacity for AI ethics governance. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology stated it will work with international partners to deepen multilateral cooperation and encourage dialogue among governments, industry, and academia, with a specific focus on ensuring that the Global South is not left behind in the governance conversation.
A Shift Toward Practical, Collaborative Framing
The tone of the action plan marks a subtle but meaningful shift in how China presents its AI governance agenda internationally. Earlier domestic regulations — such as the rules on generative AI services and the requirements that AI outputs align with core socialist values — were primarily inward-facing, designed to manage domestic deployment and political risk. As EastFrontier previously reported, China’s sweeping AI ethics review rules placed the compliance burden squarely on domestic developers.
The WAIC action plan, by contrast, is framed as an invitation to international cooperation rather than a unilateral declaration. It calls on countries to “take active steps in line with their own conditions”, language that accommodates diverse national approaches rather than insisting on a single model. This framing is strategically significant: it allows China to present its governance philosophy as flexible and inclusive, countering narratives that characterize Beijing’s AI regulations as primarily tools of censorship and political control.
The Domestic-International Tension
This outward-facing framing, however, does not resolve the underlying tension between China’s domestic AI governance priorities and its international governance ambitions. Domestically, Chinese AI developers operate under a dense web of regulations that require content filtering, algorithm transparency filings, and security assessments before public deployment. These requirements, while justified on safety grounds, also serve to ensure that AI systems operating in China do not challenge political red lines.
Internationally, China is advocating for a governance model that emphasizes state sovereignty, structured development, and inclusive access, principles that resonate strongly with developing nations skeptical of Western-dominated regulatory frameworks. As EastFrontier has analyzed in the context of China’s AI Plus industrial strategy, Beijing sees AI governance and AI industrial policy as deeply intertwined: countries that adopt China’s governance frameworks are more likely to also adopt Chinese AI infrastructure, platforms, and standards.
Timing and Strategic Context
The release of the action plan at WAIC 2026 was carefully timed. It came just hours after Xi Jinping delivered his keynote address calling for AI to be treated as an “international public good” and pledging 5,000 AI training opportunities for developing nations. Together, the speech and the action plan constitute a coherent diplomatic package: China offering both a governance philosophy and concrete capacity-building commitments to the Global South.
This positioning is directly relevant to the intensifying US-China rivalry over AI standards. Washington has been working through bodies such as the OECD and the G7 to establish AI governance norms that reflect Western values of transparency, accountability, and democratic oversight. Beijing’s action plan, released through WAIC and linked to the UN’s Global Digital Compact, offers an alternative multilateral track that bypasses Western-dominated institutions.
Whether the plan translates into concrete international uptake will depend on how effectively China can operationalize its commitments. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has pledged to promote implementation through multilateral cooperation and to focus specifically on building governance capacity in developing countries.
The establishment of WAICO, with its 29 founding members, provides an institutional vehicle for that effort. The action plan’s real significance may lie less in its specific provisions than in the infrastructure it helps build for China’s long-term influence over how the world governs artificial intelligence.