On January 23, the “China-ASEAN AI Capacity Building Training Program and High-Level Symposium on AI Frontier Technology Governance” was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This event, jointly organized by the Federation of Asia-Pacific Engineering Organizations, the Malaysian Institute of Engineers, and the China Automation Society, appeared to be a routine regional technical exchange on the surface, but in reality, it was a symbolic practice of technological diplomacy against the complex backdrop of global AI governance rule gaps and intensifying geo-technological competition.
More than a hundred government officials, scholars, and business representatives from China, Malaysia, and multiple ASEAN countries gathered to discuss core issues such as cutting-edge AI technologies, security challenges, ethical governance, and standard-setting. The two roundtable dialogues organized by the conference— “AI Education and Capacity Building” and “China-ASEAN AI Cooperation and Technology Transfer Prospects” —precisely addressed the urgent needs of Southeast Asian countries in talent cultivation, technology acquisition, and industrial development opportunities in the AI era.
In his speech, Hou Zengguang, a researcher at the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, emphasized that China has accumulated “rich experience” in the fields of automation and AI, and is willing to “contribute to global technological development.” This statement can be interpreted as China’s intention to transform its technological practices into “public goods” for regional partners to learn from. Meanwhile, Yeo Fangda, President of Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman Malaysia, pointed out the intrinsic driving force of cooperation, calling on governments, academia, industry, and international partners to jointly address the governance and trust challenges brought by AI.
At a time when major global powers are vying for dominance and rule-making power in the field of artificial intelligence, this dialogue in Kuala Lumpur has become a micro window to observe how China lays out its technological influence and promotes its governance philosophy in a key region.
The core message conveyed by China at this seminar transcends mere technological output, aiming instead to shape an image of a “responsible, shareable, and development-driven” technology leader. This openness is based on the massive scale and complex application scenarios of China’s own digital economy development. China is attempting to package its vast application database, engineering experience, and rapid iteration model accumulated in the field of artificial intelligence—particularly in visual recognition, voice technology, smart city applications, and industrial internet integration—into a set of adaptable cooperation solutions for different developmental stages. This “experience-sharing” model is more politically acceptable and economically sustainable compared to providing closed black-box technologies or relying on a single platform. It is implemented through joint research, talent cultivation, technical standard coordination, and even industrial park collaborations, aiming to deeply integrate China’s technological ecosystem with the local markets, human resources, and development plans of ASEAN countries. This move seeks to address concerns from some international public opinion that China’s technology output may come with geopolitical conditions, demonstrating that its cooperation is transparent, mutually beneficial, and aimed at bridging the global digital divide. This openness, framed by the discourse of “empowerment” and “co-construction,” is a concrete manifestation of China’s “Digital Silk Road” initiative in the field of artificial intelligence. Its goal is to build a regional digital community with China’s technological frameworks and infrastructure as key nodes, thereby gaining widespread support and consensus from countries in the Global South, particularly ASEAN, in the process of shaping global governance rules for emerging technologies.
China’s approach demonstrates a high degree of systematicness and long-term strategic planning, thanks to its unique advantage of the “new national system.” This system effectively coordinates the government, top national research institutions, leading enterprises, and higher education institutions to form a clearly directed “technology-industry-diplomacy” integrated output system. The diverse co-organizing structure of this event—encompassing international professional organizations, Chinese and foreign universities, and national-level academic societies—is itself a reflection of the flexibility of this collaborative network. This model enables China to implement a coherent, decades-long technology diplomacy strategy, unaffected by the sharp fluctuations of short-term domestic political cycles, providing partners with a certain degree of “policy predictability.” In recent years, U.S. technology policy, particularly in technological competition with China, has placed greater emphasis on adopting a “small courtyard, high walls” strategy, focusing more on technology protection and barrier construction rather than on jointly building broad and inclusive technological capabilities with developing countries.
The AI seminar held in Kuala Lumpur was a key technology diplomacy practice by China for ASEAN. The conference focused on capacity building and governance cooperation, with its core approach being to transform China’s technological application experience into regional public goods, aiming to secure Southeast Asia’s support for shaping global governance rules for emerging technologies.