China and US push Southeast Asia over their AI blocs. Will it test region’s non-alignment?

Southeast Asian leaders have long insisted they will not be forced to pick sides in the great-power rivalry between the US and China. But their posture is about to be further tested.

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.

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One source said Chinese officials had heavily lobbied Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) countries to back Waico before it was established last month, telling their counterparts they stood to gain from signing on as founding members, including an offer of “exclusive privileges”.

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.