China's securities regulator hails innovation investment, warns against fads

China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) Chairman Wu Qing on Saturday highlighted the growing role of the country's fund industry in supporting technological and industrial innovation, while calling for stronger efforts to curb speculative and disorderly investment practices.

With a new wave of technological and industrial transformation driven by advances in artificial intelligence (AI) gathering pace globally, there is an urgent need for a financial service system better suited to supporting innovation.

Against such a backdrop, addressing the fourth members' congress of the Asset Management Association of China (AMAC), Wu highlighted the growing contribution of China's fund industry to enterprise innovation.

Over the past five years, private equity and venture capital funds have provided 5.25 trillion yuan (about 776 billion U.S. dollars) in innovation capital to unlisted companies, an amount equivalent to 90 percent of equity financing raised in China's domestic market during the same period, he said.

The fund industry's role in supporting the real economy has continued to strengthen in recent years, reflected in the growing scale of venture capital funds and public funds focused on scientific and technological innovation.

"Venture capital funds totaled 3.72 trillion yuan (about 550 billion U.S. dollars) at the end of 2025. Public funds focused on scientific and technological innovation totaled nearly 800 billion yuan (about 118 billion U.S. dollars). There are 75,900 high-tech enterprise projects under investment nationwide, helping nurture a number of industry leaders with global competitiveness," Shi Zhenqiang, executive vice chairman of AMAC, said at the congress.

While highlighting the fund industry's growing role in supporting innovation, Wu urged institutions to better support early-stage and hard-tech ventures while guarding against speculative and disorderly practices.

"Industry institutions, particularly private equity and venture capital funds, should strengthen their ability to support innovators in uncharted areas and better invest in early-stage startups, small enterprises, long-term projects and hard technology that are innovative. We must resolutely curb pseudo-innovation and disorderly innovation, including concept-driven speculation, multi-layered investment structures, excessive speculation and channel-based transactions that merely circulate funds within the financial system," he said.

China's securities regulator hails innovation investment, warns against fads

The newly-established World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) marks a major milestone in AI development and a significant step toward global AI governance, international delegates said on Friday.

Twenty-nine countries on Thursday signed an agreement in Shanghai on establishing WAICO, an independent intergovernmental international organization headquartered in Shanghai.

The organization aims to promote international cooperation and global governance on AI, ensuring that AI is beneficial, safe and fair, thereby promoting its healthy and orderly development to benefit all humanity.

"I think this organization reinforces the need for multilateral cooperation. So you have 29 countries that have come together. I think yesterday's developments underline the importance of the capacity-building that countries around the world are facing an AI divide. There are some countries that do not have the talent, the datasets, the computer infrastructure, the access to the right models, and therefore efforts such as these can help bridge the AI divide," said UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Envoy for Digital and Emerging Technologies Amandeep Singh Gill.

Alaa Abdulaal, chief of Digital Economy Intelligence at the Digital Cooperation Organization, also hailed the launch, saying that cooperation is vital to ensure that no country is structurally excluded from the evolving digital landscape.

"Any initiative that is targeted for opening dialogues and innovation and conversation between countries to make sure that everyone is participating in the digital economy is a huge milestone. Whenever we have cooperation, whenever we have different countries, different representation, making sure that no one is left outside AI, it is a huge achievement, definitely," said Abdulaal.

World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization marks milestone in AI development: int'l delegates