Content Detail

• Content META

  Title	China wants to lead the world on AI regulation — will the plan work?
  ID	28838128
  External ID	239f63bfadabf1dc68721e5b06791c16
  Author	Đào Thu Hằng
  Published Date	Dec. 2, 2025, 7:11 p.m.
  Summary	nature.com Having placed artificial intelligence at the centre of its own economic strategy, China is driving efforts to create an international system to govern the technology's use. Chinese presi…
  Tags	None
  URL	https://cvdvn.net/2025/12/03/china-wants-to-lead-the-world-on-ai-regulation-will-the-plan-work
  Sentiment	Negative: 0.02204    Neutral: 0.91016    Positive: 0.06780
  Relevance	0.00000

• Content Details

  Content ID	36465159
  Key	24f09e4b-be7b-428e-99df-b1f7ea9218c6
  Content	nature.com Having placed artificial intelligence at the centre of its own economic strategy, China is driving efforts to create an international system to govern the technology's use. Chinese president Xi Jinping speaking at the 2025 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Gyeongju, South Korea.Credit: Yonhap via AP/Alamy Despite risks ranging from exacerbating inequality to causing existential catastrophe, the world has yet to agree on regulations to govern artificial intelligence. Although a patchwork of national and regional regulations exists, for many countries binding rules are still being fleshed out. In October, at a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated his country's proposal to create a body known as the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), which would bring nations together as a step towards creating a global governance system for AI.China seeks self-reliance in science in next five-year plan The proposal is part of a wider drive to be at the helm of efforts to govern AI, in contrast to a US approach that is focused on deregulation. When it comes to transparency and AI policy, 'China is the good guy at the moment,' Wendy Hall, a computer scientist at the University of Southampton, UK, told reporters at an event in London in October. Many hurdles lie in the way to creating a binding intergovernmental agreement on AI, but some advocates say it is possible, comparing the technology to other risky but useful endeavours for which agreements exist, such as nuclear power and aviation. Nature looks at China's approach, what a global AI governance body might look like and its chance of success. Encouraged by the government, Chinese firms tend to release models as open weight, meaning that they can be downloaded and built on. And compared with Western nations, China has less of a focus on making machines that could outsmart humans — often referred to as artificial general intelligence — and is instead concentrating on a race to use AI to drive economic growth. This is exemplified by a policy introduced in August called AI+, says Kwan Yee Ng, who leads international AI governance at Concordia AI, a Beijing-based consultancy that focuses on AI safety. China was among the first nations to introduce AI-specific regulations, beginning in 2022, and has wide-ranging rules on harmful content, privacy and data security, for example. Developers of public-facing AI-powered services must let Chinese regulators test their systems ahead of deployment, says Ng. The result is that models such as those developed by the Hangzhou-based company DeepSeek, which found world fame with its R1 model earlier this year, 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. Despite this, the authorities often take a soft approach to enforcing that regulation, says Angela Zhang, a law researcher and specialist in AI regulation at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. By contrast, the United States has no comprehensive legislation on AI at the federal level, and in January President Donald Trump revoked an executive order aimed at ensuring AI safety. He has positioned his administration as pro-industry, last month suggesting in a social-media post that it would add a clause to a federal bill to prevent states from regulating AI. The European Union approach has been to classify AI systems by risk level, with different rules relating to transparency and oversight at each tier, and obligations that came into force in August, aimed at the most powerful AI systems. The UK government, meanwhile, has shelved plans to introduce comprehensive AI legislation until next year, at the earliest. Very little. The only legally binding international regulation comes 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 commits any signatory country to implementing its broad obligations — such as ensuring that AI activities align with human rights — through their national laws. But there are no sanctions and no supranational enforcement body, says Lucia Velasco, an economist and researcher at the Oxford Martin School's AI Governance Initiative, who is based in New York. Companies and nations have also signed various 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 running a 'dialogue' process and has created a scientific panel to guide countries' regulatory efforts. WAICO would be a way for countries to coordinate AI governance rules while 'fully respecting the differences in national policies and practices' and championing the global south, Chinese officials have said. China has proposed that the body's headquarters be in Shanghai, but other details remain uncertain. WAICO looks unlikely to govern AI directly in any enforceable way (and China has said it backs a UN approach to governing global AI) but it could be a route for countries to gradually coalesce around a framework. Xi's call to create WAICO was at least the fourth such push from a Chinese official in four months, suggesting the idea is important to the government, says Ng. One reason is commercial, says Zhang. 'The fact that China is able to set standards helps China's product diffusion all over the world,' she says. The move also gives China some diplomatic cachet. 'China is trying to be like [an older] brother to the global south, arguing 'we also need to have our voice in the governance of AI and not be dictated to',' says Zhang. We don't know. AI-safety experts often cite nuclear-power regulation and the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency as an analogy, says Ng. Standards set by the UN agency are non-binding but are complemented by legally binding treaties it helped to forge, such as the Convention on Nuclear Safety. Particularly compelling, says Ng, is to borrow from nuclear energy the idea of third-party or mutual inspections of AI development, to ensure adherence to any commitments. Another idea that has been floated is to create a body analogous to CERN, Europe's particle physics laboratory, where the most advanced AI could be generated by everybody, for the benefit of all. A third model is something resembling the UN's International Civil Aviation Organization, which develops technical standards for aviation that countries then incorporate into national law. In all these examples, the UN, or a UN agency, was instrumental in their creation. However, 'AI does not map neatly onto past governance models,' says Velasco. 'AI is general-purpose, fast-evolving and largely driven by the private sector.' The UN could be the venue from which a future global AI governance arrangement emerges, but this would require a member state to initiate that at the UN General Assembly, says Velasco. A perceived race between the US and China to dominate world AI makes creating any international agreement that would put limits on the technology 'very difficult', says Grace Gonzales, a policy adviser at ControlAI, a London-based non-profit organization that works to reduce the risks to humanity from AI. Since the Bletchley Declaration, the focus on AI safety has weakened at follow-up events in Seoul and Paris, and there is a ' general lack of robust governmental channels at the moment' involving major AI nations, says Ng. Although the UN is the platform that brings the most countries together, 'it comes with a set of challenges', such as a lack of funding and the slow pace of processes, says Brian Tse, founder of Concordia AI. Still, common standards can come about without international, binding agreements. WAICO could serve 'a critical function' if it promotes common understanding of AI risks and capabilities, or helps countries to agree not to cross certain lines in AI development, says Ng. The 1994 Convention on Nuclear Safety helped to improve reactor safety, but this came about only after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Soviet Union, says Tse. 'In AI, our job is to make sure that we get ahead of the curve,' he says, and reduce the chance of a crisis 'before it happens'. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03902-y
  Content Reference URL	None

• Publisher

  None

• Data Source

  Data Source Name	NewsCatcher (#303)
  Data Source Type	news
  Data Source URL	https://www.newscatcherapi.com/
  Description
  Weight	1