The People’s Daily is using the 2026 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit to promote China’s open-source approach to Artificial Intelligence (AI), presenting it as an alternative to the concentration of advanced computing resources and AI capabilities in developed countries, particularly the United States.
Held from November 2 to 5 in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province, this year’s summit adopted the theme “Open Source and Openness, Joint Development and Shared Benefits.” Access to computing power and digital infrastructure remains highly unequal worldwide. It cites a World Bank report showing that high-income countries dominate the global TOP500 supercomputer rankings, while a report by the UN Economic Commission for Africa found that the continent accounts for less than 1 percent of global data center capacity.
Chinese open-source models, such as DeepSeek, have lowered the cost of adopting AI and made the technology more accessible to smaller businesses and developers.
According to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Chinese open-source AI models have recorded more than 10 billion cumulative downloads worldwide, while a national open-source AI community has attracted over 11 million users. A spring 2026 report by Hugging Face found that Chinese-developed models accounted for 41 percent of global downloads on its platform between February 2025 and February 2026, making China the largest single source of open-source models.
The growing international participation also shows the appeal of China’s vision for global digital cooperation. The summit received 360 submissions from 80 countries and regions for its “Outstanding Cases of Building a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace” collection.
Source: People’s Daily, November 4, 2026
http://finance.people.com.cn/n1/2026/1104/c1004-40827473.html