Beijing Forum puts AI collaboration with China and shared ethics into execution
The Beijing Forum opened on November 7, 2025 with a clear message: cooperate on AI, align on ethics, and move from talk to delivery. The theme - "Civilizational Coexistence in the Age of Digital Intelligence" - set the tone for concrete partnerships, not press releases.
Leaders from government, universities, and science pressed for practical work with China, citing its deep talent pool, vast data, and a market that tests ideas at scale. The conversation centered on research outcomes, governance, and how to keep people at the center of AI.
Why this matters for scientists and R&D leaders
- China-South Korea programs are producing results in carbon capture, green hydrogen, polar research, and AI-based disaster prediction - with shared data and joint committees to keep projects on track.
- Participants pointed to the UNESCO AI Ethics Recommendation as a baseline for cross-border work.
- APEC ministers agreed AI and digital tech drive sustainable growth and must be used in a trustworthy way, reinforcing a shift from statements to implementation. See APEC's digital economy focus here.
Signals from the forum
Park Jin outlined China-South Korea cooperation through science and technology committees and innovation forums, covering robotics, AI research, and climate science. He emphasized value-led collaboration and mutual trust as the path for regional order.
UCL President Michael Spence noted strong UK-China academic ties and China's speed in humanoid robotics, EVs, and deep-tech applications. He called governance-focused forums useful for shaping sensible regulation through formal sessions and candid hallway debates.
Nobel laureate Michael Levitt framed AI as one intelligence among several - biological and cultural included. Large language models advanced once trained on massive text, enabling accurate next-word prediction, which supports translation, transcription, and reasoning. His advice: ask questions "like an 8-year-old," use multiple models for coding and analysis, and verify everything with scientific rigor.
NUS President Tan Eng Chye argued that institutions need to get good at AI now or fall behind. His three priorities:
- Leadership and governance: make AI a strategic pillar; set clear rules and oversight.
- People and skills: train faculty, staff, and students to use AI confidently and creatively.
- Ethics and fairness: build transparency, privacy protection, and inclusion into every project.
Peking University's Cheng Lesong warned that many feel like outsiders to the systems affecting their lives. He urged defending human dignity, resisting becoming "playthings of algorithms," practicing critical reflection, and setting ethical boundaries. His call: pluralistic, cross-cultural cooperation and a mindset of coexistence over zero-sum rivalry.
What you can implement this quarter
- Adopt shared ethics: align lab policies to the UNESCO recommendation; publish an internal checklist for datasets, models, and deployments.
- Build verification pipelines: preregister evaluation plans; add adversarial tests; document failure modes; require independent replication before high-stakes use.
- Advance data collaboration: use privacy-preserving methods (federated learning, differential privacy, well-documented synthetic data) for cross-border studies.
- Standards and benchmarks: co-develop task-specific benchmarks with partner labs; include bias, safety, and robustness metrics by default.
- Structure partnerships: set MOUs covering IP, compute access, and data governance; run joint seminars and visiting-scholar rotations with Chinese counterparts.
- Upskill teams: give researchers hands-on courses in prompting, evaluation, and tooling; prioritize reproducibility. For structured options, see our AI certification for data analysis.
- Track policy signals: follow APEC and national regulators; run quarterly reviews to keep projects aligned with emerging guidance.
Context and scale
This year's forum brought more than 400 guests and scholars from 36 countries and regions. Since 2004, over 7,000 dignitaries and scholars have convened under the Beijing Forum banner.
The takeaway is simple: collaboration with China is moving from concept to systems, datasets, and measurable results - with shared ethics as the common language. For research leaders, the window is open to turn policy into publishable work and deployable tools.
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