Through the east-west computing resource transfer, China will lay out data centre resources systematically and develop them as one national system. That requires raising the quality and utilisation of computing services and improving cross-region scheduling.
Four departments jointly issued the implementation plan for national computing hubs, laying out hub nodes and starting the transfer project to build a national computing network. Analysts read it as meaningful guidance for concentrating data centre infrastructure, promoting energy saving and driving technology iteration.
Local optimisation versus system optimisation
As industries digitise and 5G, AI and IoT spread, total data volume is exploding, and data centres have become core new infrastructure for cloud adoption. The question is whether to optimise locally or nationally — and the answer, under the plan, is national: moving from scattered, single-site builds to coordinated deployment across eight regions — Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Yangtze Delta, the Greater Bay Area, Chengdu-Chongqing, Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia and Gansu — with data centres developing in step with network, cloud, capacity, data and security.
One national network means integrated scheduling of clusters and metro data centres, which makes cross-region big data applications practical: industry and city data brains form, capacity and data convert into insight efficiently, and data security capacity rises with it.
The energy problem
Capacity tracks growth — each one-point rise in the computing power index is associated with a 3.3 per mille gain in the digital economy and 1.8 per mille in GDP — but uncoordinated expansion easily becomes building for building’s sake, with duplicates and waste.
Data centres are heavy power consumers; a hyperscale facility can use on the order of 100 million kilowatt-hours a year. Without energy planning, capacity ends up concentrated where power is tight while regions rich in clean energy sit empty. Some local builds are non-standard, with bespoke power and network provisions, scattering the landscape.
‘Under the carbon goals, the growth of data centre energy use and emissions is a real problem, so the energy supply has to turn green — more renewables is the ideal route,’ said He Baohong of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. ‘The west has abundant renewable energy. Concentrating data centres there, built green and efficient, serves the carbon goals.’
A national layout avoids duplicate construction and wasted resources, and pushes green levels up. Vendors are responding with efficiency technology — prefabricated modular AI data centres cutting logistics and assembly carbon by over 20%, and liquid cooling raising total cooling energy efficiency by 30% to 50% over traditional air cooling.
Republished for information. The original text has not been independently verified and does not necessarily reflect our views.
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