As Trump accuses China of stealing voter data, Xi pitches Beijing as a responsible tech leader

As US President Donald Trump accused Beijing of exploiting US election data in a televised speech in Washington, halfway across the world in China, Xi Jinping was delivering a very different message.

Beijing is a responsible global leader bent on shaping the future of technology for good, Xi intoned to hundreds of tech executives, researchers and industry figures gathering in Shanghai Friday for the opening of China’s flagship artificial intelligence summit.

“With AI advancing at a staggering speed, we must ensure its development is for positive, for good, and for humanity,” Xi said in an opening address to the conference. “We must make its oversight and governance precise and effective and constantly refine measures to forestall loss of control.”

Xi spoke minutes after Trump laid out a litany of claims against the Chinese government, including that it had illicitly acquired 220 million American voter files amid broader efforts to influence US elections. China has denied the allegations.

The juxtaposition of the two messages illuminates the deepening faultlines and anxieties within the technological competition between the US and China, which the rapid rise of AI is only deepening.

Xi’s message – a clear bid for China to helm the setting of global rules around AI – comes at a moment of fierce US-China competition over the technology, as well as intense concern about its national security implications, including AI’s ability to exploit software and database vulnerabilities.

In his address, Xi hit back against “overstretching the national security concept in the field of AI” or “placing one country’s security over that of others” – veiled allusions to how Beijing sees the American approach to the technology.

Instead, China has looked to push forward a message that the technology should be a “global public good” – and that it is willing to work with countries to develop it together.

On the eve of the conference, China launched its World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), a new grouping of 29 countries, including Russia, Indonesia and Pakistan, friendly to China and its aims.