Trump, the rivalry between major powers and Beijing, which has already offered AI to the BRICS bloc

The day before yesterday, U.S. President Donald Trump, commenting on the appeal by scientists and executives from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google to slow down the development of AI, said: “We are beating China at artificial intelligence, and frankly I want it to stay that way, because whoever wins at AI simply wins”, effectively shifting the issue to the theme of competition between superpowers. A few hours earlier, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, speaking at the BRICS summit, had touched on the same issue, reiterating the long-standing position that Beijing opposes ‘closed’ American models and calls for open systems. The Chinese leader announced that Beijing will spearhead the creation of a BRICS “open-source AI community”, making models such as DeepSeek and Qwen available to the bloc’s member states, alongside specialist training and seminars. This position was echoed yesterday by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun, who said during the daily press conference: “AI is a technology that is crucial to the well-being of all humanity. All parties should work together to promote the open and inclusive development of AI, for the benefit of all,” adding that “alarmism, confrontation and unfair competition only undermine efforts towards sound global governance of artificial intelligence, and serve no one’s interests”. Global governance, in Beijing’s view, is that dictated by the People’s Republic. And it is no coincidence that Trump is speaking of competition with Beijing in a much more conciliatory tone than usual. The White House has invested heavily, politically, in the summit scheduled to take place in two weeks’ time in Washington, when Xi will arrive in the United States following the meeting in Busan on 30 October last year. The Chinese leader has promised to arrive accompanied by a large trade delegation, but everything could change at the last minute, as Chinese officials continue to threaten to call off the summit, particularly over the issue of Taiwan and the possibility that Trump might authorise new arms supplies to the island.

Whilst Trump takes a short-term view, using AI as an economic lever and as a battleground for technological competition between superpowers, Beijing’s plan is more ambitious: namely, to set the rules governing how artificial intelligence will be used worldwide. It is no coincidence that China, which has for years presented itself as a champion of the Global South, chose the BRICS summit specifically to discuss this: a meeting used as a weapon to curtail the influence of Western democracies over the rest of the world. For Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, it was a perfect showcase of international respectability, useful for refuting the notion of diplomatic isolation. Beijing wants to use the ‘dangers’ of AI as a key to engaging with the rest of the world, whilst dictating the rules.