Chinese AI models’ global usage rose from under 15% to over 54% in a year, according to OpenRouter leaderboard data. Beijing is promoting cheaper, open systems through a 29-country group as Washington presses countries to choose sides in AI.
Xi launched the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization in July; 29 countries, including Russia, Indonesia and Pakistan, were recruited to its open-model vision. Trump’s Pax Silica aims to reduce reliance on China for AI supply chains; more than two dozen countries and the EU signed up. At preliminary talks last weekend, a safety notification system was proposed and the sides agreed to establish formal AI dialogue. Their summit this week yielded little progress beyond broad consensus to continue talks.
Open models can be downloaded, customized and run without the hefty fees charged by US firms, a draw for some Global South developers. Experts say Beijing could use licensing or other limits on its most capable models for national-security reasons. Anthropic and OpenAI have alleged Chinese labs trained models on outputs from US systems; Beijing has rejected the claims, while DeepSeek and Moonshot did not respond to CNN. Washington has floated sanctions or other restrictions, but Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft and other companies warned against sweeping limits in a July open letter.
