China is sending a vice-premier in charge of industrial policies to a high-level artificial intelligence (AI) summit in Paris next week, as a small Chinese firm shakes up the global AI race.
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Vice-Premier Zhang Guoqing will visit France from Sunday to Wednesday as a special representative of President Xi Jinping to the AI Action Summit, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Friday.
Media reports earlier said US Vice-President J.D. Vance would also attend the two-day summit starting on Monday.
But it is unclear whether Zhang and Vance will meet during the event, which will be attended by delegates from 80 countries.
The summit comes as the US-China AI rivalry intensifies, with Europe not making as much progress.
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A chatbot programme from Chinese start-up DeepSeek sent shock waves through the AI sector last month, with a performance that rivalled American tech giant OpenAI’s ChatGPT but at only a fraction of its training costs.