What happened
On July 23, 2026, at APEC Digital Weeks in Chengdu, China, the 21 APEC member economies (including the US and China) released the 'Chengdu Statement' on AI, the first ministerial-level APEC AI statement to explicitly support open-source AI development, calling for 'strong security assurance' through development and deployment while emphasizing respect for security, data protection, and intellectual property rights.
Why it matters
This is a notable multilateral policy signal that both the US and China endorsed open-source AI cooperation at a ministerial level even as the Trump administration simultaneously considers export-control and Entity List actions against Chinese open-weight AI labs (e.g., Moonshot AI) — a policy tension that will shape how open-weight models are governed cross-border.
Action needed
No binding compliance action; organizations using open-weight models (including Chinese-origin models) should monitor for follow-on binding measures given the tension between this statement and concurrent US national-security scrutiny of Chinese AI labs.