Chinese state media has published a commentary suggesting that the "artificial intelligence (AI) declaration" announced by President Lee Jae-myung in Silicon Valley can only succeed on the premise of broad cooperation with global markets, including China. The move is analyzed as Beijing pushing back against Korea's efforts to strengthen technology and supply chain cooperation with leading U.S. companies.
The Global Times, the English-language outlet of China's state-run Huanqiu Shibao, said this in a commentary titled "Seoul's AI blueprint needs the global market to be realized" on the 27th. The newspaper introduced the AI declaration that President Lee had announced in San Francisco on the 24th (local time), containing a national vision for fostering the AI sector, explaining that Korean companies and global tech giants had agreed to pursue semiconductor cooperation projects worth a total of $950 billion. It assessed that "Korea has built independent competitiveness in the AI hardware supply chain based on its dominance in the memory semiconductor field."
However, the Global Times stressed that "no single country can complete and lead the entire global AI industry chain on its own," adding that "realizing the ambition to become an 'irreplaceable' core country in the AI supply chain requires fair, open, and unbiased cooperation." It argued that the value of cutting-edge chips or advanced data centers is limited unless supported by a vast downstream operations sector, diverse user scenarios, and a market large enough to absorb demand. The Global Times raised its voice, saying that "because of this industrial logic, Korea is building a multi-dimensional cooperation network not only with the United States but also with other regions and markets," and that "in the context of global industrial cooperation, this also includes practical exchanges with China."
The Global Times noted that the Korea Innovation Center (KIC China) under the Ministry of Science and ICT supported the group participation of eight Korean AI companies at this year's World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC). It claimed that "this is the first case of Korean AI companies participating in WAIC as a group," and that "it demonstrates a clear will that Korea will not be isolated in China, one of the world's largest AI application markets."
