Exclusive | Waico vs Pax Silica: Southeast Asia caught between China and US in AI race

This time, the battleground is AI. While Washington wants the region locked into Pax Silica

– its bid to build a China-free artificial intelligence supply chain – Beijing wants its neighbours to join China’s own World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation (Waico).

Sources told the South China Morning Post that both powers had in recent months piled pressure on Southeast Asian economies, each trying to draw them into its own AI framework.

Another source said the lobbying had reached senior levels of government, with Beijing pitching its AI organisation as an inclusive body that championed developing economies, in contrast to what it described as an exclusionary American initiative.

Waico, which brands itself as advancing “AI for good and for all”, was established in Shanghai at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference

in July with an initial 29 members, mainly from the Global South, in a launch elevated by the presence of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Five Southeast Asian countries were among the signatories, namely Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia and Myanmar.