China deepens footprint at AI conference despite NeurIPS dispute, US tensions
China deepens footprint at AI conference despite NeurIPS dispute, US tensions
Publish Date: 2026-05-11 10:00:00
Source Domain: www.scmp.com
- Despite strained relations between Beijing and Washington, Chinese technology companies and researchers participated actively in a leading global artificial intelligence conference, the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR).
- Papers with contributors from mainland China and Hong Kong constituted over 51% of the accepted submissions at this year’s ICLR, marking a strong presence compared to the United States’ share of just under 32%.
- This year’s ICLR event, held in Rio de Janeiro, received around 19,000 submissions with an acceptance rate of 28%.
- The robust participation by Chinese researchers and companies follows a call from several major professional bodies in China for a boycott of the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS).
- Initial concerns about reduced Chinese involvement in international AI conferences arose from a misunderstanding regarding new participation policies at NeurIPS that appeared to initially bar US-sanctioned entities, which did not include major Chinese AI firms like Huawei.
