HONG KONG (AP) — As the two major AI powers, the United States and China, form their own AI blocs, other countries are maneuvering to exploit the strengths of both groups and avoid losing out.
As the rivalry intensifies, experts say the window for countries to freely choose between the two AI superpowers could narrow, forcing them at some point to choose between the United States. Pax Silica and Chinese inspiration Global AI Cooperation Organization.
This could leave many countries with a dilemma: Do they go for the most advanced chips and AI technologies from the United States, or do they join China’s open source and more affordable AI systems?
Kazakhstana Central Asian nation of around 21 million people, is a rare example of a country that has sought to close this gap.
Just three weeks after AI Minister Zhaslan Madiyev visited Washington in June to join the US group working to strengthen AI supply chains, he traveled to Shanghai for a signing ceremony making the Central Asian country a founding member of China’s initiative to shape the global AI agenda.
Being part of Pax Silica means more technology partnerships, jobs in high-tech manufacturing, and a place in global AI supply chains. At the same time, within the framework of China A global AI cooperation organization, alongside 28 other founding countries including Pakistan and Russia, Kazakhstan also hopes to have a say in setting regional and global AI standards.
“Everyone is protecting themselves,” said Dana Masalimova, a former Kazakh diplomat and independent scholar and associate at the Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.
“We don’t want this binary choice,” she said.
Kazakhstan among countries hoping to get the most out of both blocs
Kazakhstan benefits from both U.S. and Chinese investment, but is in a “very precarious situation,” Masalimova said.
The country has rich mineral resources critical to AI development and has cheap electricity to power data centers, which have become politically tense in the United States.
Earlier this year, the government of Kazakhstan signed an investment deal worth up to $10 billion involving Nvidia to build a “data center valley” in the country.
Meanwhile, more and more Chinese companies are investing in Kazakhstan. Local officials say Chinese foreign direct investment in Kazakhstan reached a record $2.8 billion in 2025. Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in July to expand cooperation under China’s Belt and Road global infrastructure construction initiative.
Washington’s pressure campaign against the Beijing court
China and the United States are leveraging access to AI to increase their global influence.
President Donald Trump insisted last month that “whoever wins AI will win.” US officials and AI companies have accused China of large-scale “distillation” or the extraction of capabilities, from bordering American models.
Beijing has rejected these claims and says the United States is seeking a monopoly on AI while restrict China’s access to some of the most advanced AI chips and chipmaking machines in the world.
Washington signaled that Pax Silica – with China as an implicit target – was for trusted people only.
“Countries cannot be trusted partners in Pax Silica while engaging substantively in initiatives that advance a competing vision of super intelligence,” the US State Department said, using the Trump administration’s new preferred term for AI.
For its part, Beijing praises the openness and inclusive nature of its World AI Cooperation Organization. “As major countries in the field of AI, China and the United States should exploit their respective strengths in AI rather than protecting themselves against each other,” the Chinese Embassy in Washington said in a statement. “AI should not belong to big countries.”
The two AI powers have different messages largely because Beijing must court third countries in its attempt to build an alternative coalition, while Washington already has a powerful network of allies, said Kyle Chan, a fellow at the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution.
This empowers what he described as “swing countries.”
Indonesia and Singapore could also be caught between China and the United States
Like Kazakhstan, Indonesia has vital resources for AI and other technologies, such as nickel and copper. It is also looking to get the most out of the two AI powerhouses, having joined China’s World AI Cooperation Organization.
Indonesia wants to benefit from both, Mari Pangestu, vice president of the Indonesian National Economic Council, told reporters at an event hosted by the University of Hong Kong’s Business School. “We should be able to do both, so to speak. And choose the best system.”
American AI companies are investing in other countries like Singapore, where Anthropic is setting up its latest office in Asia. The city-state says it is also considering joining the Chinese AI organization.
In Saudi Arabia, AI startup Human unveiled in September a platform built on an open model by a Chinese AI company. The kingdom also has an agreement with NVIDIA to expand AI computing with its advanced chips.
France, one of the most ambitious AI developers after the United States and China, is trying to go its own way with its startup Mistral, whose new model released this month outperforms some advanced Chinese models.
Japan is closely aligned with the United States on strategic and security issues, including advanced semiconductors, AI, and trusted standards. But it won’t reject more affordable Chinese AI models for “lower-risk applications,” said Takahiro Tsuchiya, a professor at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies.
Difficult to challenge the 2 great powers
For countries like the United Kingdom and Germany, which have substantial economic and military capacity but have not developed strong frontier AI models themselves, alignment with the United States may be vital for their access to data centers and chip deals with American companies, said Anton Leicht and Sam Winter-Levy of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Essentially, their access to advanced AI systems “depends on the whims of policymakers in Washington and Beijing,” they said, while these countries may have limited influence over the future of AI.
China, for its part, has been bridging the technology gap with the United States when it comes to chip manufacturing and advanced AI capabilities, but it still lags behind America’s best technological capabilities, at least for now.
Additionally, Beijing’s open source approach allows countries to be less dependent on the United States, and China has provided funding for developing countries to develop their own AI ecosystems, said Alberto Lemma, a researcher at think tank ODI Global.
To date, China has provided public sector grants and loans for projects and activities that use or enable AI technologies in at least 77 low- and middle-income countries, according to the AidData research lab at William & Mary, a public university in Virginia. The main beneficiaries include Nigeria, Zambia, Ghana, Bangladesh, Senegal, Cameroon and Kenya. Public perceptions are also changing. Results of a recent Pew Research Center study showed that people in middle-income countries are increasingly positive and more trusting of China when it comes to AI and the regulation of this technology.
All things considered, many countries “don’t want to pick a side… because every technology stack has advantages and disadvantages,” said Aalok Mehta, director of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Most countries may not have a good option since they cannot compete in building pioneering AI models, but “every country in the world, in one way or another, is thinking about AI sovereignty,” he said. After all, “perhaps no other country than the United States and China can actually build these very large and powerful models.”
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Tang reported from Washington.
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