China wants to shape the story of the AI race — and it passes through Italy

China's embassy in Italy is promoting a narrative that frames artificial intelligence as a central pillar of Beijing's foreign policy and industrial strategy, aiming to shape global perceptions of its technological leadership. Foreign Minister Wang Yi highlighted over 160 projects launched in the past year under the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and noted that more than 130 countries support the Global Development Initiative, with over $23 billion mobilized for 1,800 projects. The embassy also promoted the 'next new three' industries—AI, robotics, and innovative pharmaceuticals—citing that Chinese AI models were the most used on OpenRouter for twelve consecutive weeks and that Chinese industrial robots reached 141 countries in the first half of 2026.

ROME – Artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming part of China’s diplomatic offer, and it is fast becoming a contest over who gets to define what technological leadership actually means and how to talk about it. Taken together , the stories circulated in recent days by the Chinese embassy in Italy — spanning diplomacy in the Global South, industrial policy and space-based computing — amount to a more coherent message: an attempt to shape how foreign audiences understand China’s place in the emerging AI order. AI becomes foreign policy. The embassy’s diplomatic newsletter reports that Foreign Minister Wang Yi has placed it alongside development and multilateralism in Beijing’s outreach to emerging economies, linking technological cooperation to a broader Chinese proposition for the Global South. - At a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Bishkek, Wang highlighted more than 160 projects launched over the past year in areas including the digital economy, AI, energy and innovation. Days later in Beijing, marking five years of the Global Development Initiative, he said more than 130 countries and international organisations now support the GDI, with over $23 billion mobilised for more than 1,800 development projects. The political language surrounding those figures matters. Wang called for development to return to the centre of the international agenda and pointed to the recently established World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization https://decode39.com/15754/ai-china-us-no-third-ways-for-italy/ , or WAICO, as an instrument to narrow the digital and AI divides between North and South. - AI is thus being folded into a vocabulary that Beijing has spent years promoting across the developing world: development, sovereignty, multipolarity and resistance to technological exclusion. China can present itself as a provider of capabilities to countries concerned that the AI revolution will otherwise remain concentrated in a small group of economies and companies. - The implicit target of this argument is the system of technological restrictions that Washington and, to a lesser extent, its partners have constructed around China. Beijing’s answer is to recast access itself as a geopolitical asset. From the “new three” to the next technological wave. The same argument is appearing in China’s industrial narrative. After electric vehicles, lithium batteries and solar panels — the industries known as the “new three” — Chinese commentary is now promoting a “next new three”: artificial intelligence, robotics and innovative pharmaceuticals. - An editorial in the Global Times , the Communist Party-affiliated newspaper, shared by the Embassy in Italy, argues that China does not seek to “compress the development space of other countries” but to make innovation more accessible and inclusive. The choice of comparison is significant. The original “new three” became symbols of China’s industrial transformation, but also sources of increasingly serious trade tensions with the United States and Europe over subsidies, excess capacity and strategic dependencies. Presenting AI and robotics as their successors suggests that Beijing sees a similar combination of industrial policy, scale and technological investment driving its next phase of international expansion. - Chinese language models are already gaining users outside the domestic market. According to figures cited by the Global Times, Chinese models were the most used on OpenRouter for twelve consecutive weeks, while industrial robots produced in China reached 141 countries and territories in the first half of 2026. Licensing agreements involving innovative Chinese pharmaceuticals have meanwhile reached a potential value of about $110 billion. - Beijing packages this expansion as evidence that technological openness produces shared gains. Its competitors are more likely to focus on what happens when Chinese companies acquire substantial positions in technologies that will underpin future industrial systems. The experience of solar panels, batteries and EVs makes that question harder to dismiss. Building the infrastructure behind the narrative. The ambitions extend to the physical architecture of AI. In Chengdu, private aerospace company ADAspace is developing an orbital computing network designed to process data directly in space, explained the Embassy. - The company launched its first 12 AI-capable satellites in May 2025 and plans eventually to deploy 2,800. About 1,000 are expected to form a commercial network by 2030, with the full constellation targeted for 2035 and connected to more than 100 terrestrial data centres. In November 2025, the Qwen3 language model was installed on the company’s orbital computing centre. - Much of this remains prospective. Yet Chengdu illustrates the breadth of the Chinese effort to build the infrastructure surrounding AI, from computing and energy to connectivity and space assets. The narrative of technological leadership has considerable industrial capacity behind it. This is also where an awkward contrast emerges. In the United States, rapid data-centre construction has generated genuine local opposition https://decode39.com/16136/who-is-fueling-the-protests-against-ai-data-centers-china-too/ over energy, water, employment and quality of life. Evidence has also emerged of Chinese state-linked actors amplifying some of those grievances and the broader narrative surrounding opposition to American AI infrastructure. - The point is not that China created those protests. It is that Beijing’s information ecosystem can find strategic value in the difficulties its competitors face in expanding AI capacity, even as China’s external messaging describes its own technological expansion in the language of inclusion and shared development. Selling “certainty”. Wang Yi captured the broader message in one phrase: “The certainty that China offers is a precious resource in an uncertain world”. - That proposition reaches beyond AI. But artificial intelligence gives Beijing an increasingly powerful vehicle through which to promote it. Models, robots, development programmes and computing infrastructure can deepen technological relationships with countries while carrying Chinese standards, companies and strategic influence with them. Why it matters: For Europe, this makes the Chinese AI challenge more complicated than a race over technological performance. The question is also how the diffusion of Chinese technology may reshape dependencies and relationships at a moment when many governments are trying to reduce their exposure to Beijing in other strategic sectors. - The newsletter circulated by the Chinese embassy in Rome is revealing in precisely this respect. - What looks at first like a collection of stories about Chinese technological progress contains a coherent proposition for its Italian audience: China’s rise in AI should be understood through development, accessibility and cooperation. This messaging is not confined to Italy. Across several European capitals, Chinese diplomatic missions are engaged in a similar effort to frame AI and broader technological cooperation as mutually beneficial, aware that — as with 5G a decade earlier — Europe’s internal political and economic fissures can be leveraged to advance Beijing’s strategic position. - In practice, this often means appealing to commercial convenience and market access, while, at the level of public perception https://decode39.com/15704/pew-survey-italians-now-view-china-more-favorably-than-the-u-s/ , also taking advantage of a growing strain in transatlantic relations, fuelled in part by the often unpredictable approach of the Trump administration to US–Europe ties. The bottom line: That framing deserves attention because the competition around artificial intelligence is already extending well beyond models and chips. - Beijing is investing in the infrastructure needed to compete, while also working to make its version of technological leadership attractive abroad. - The ability to shape how that expansion is understood may prove an important part of the advantage China is seeking – even through strategic narrative.