China initiates east-data-west-computing project

(ECNS) -- China has approved the project of constructing eight national computing hubs and 10 national data center clusters, marking the completion of the overall layout of the country's integrated big data center system, according to a recent document jointly released by several departments including China's National Development and Reform Committee (NDRC).

The eight national computing hubs will be built in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, southwest China's Guizhou Province, northwest China's Gansu Province and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

According to the layout of the integrated big data center system, China will develop data center clusters based on theseeight hubs, achieving coordinated construction between data centers, network, cloud computing, and big data.

Currently, data centers are mainly distributed in eastern China, facing land and resource shortages. It is hard to maintain these data centers due to their large demand for energy.

The project aims to establish a new computing power network that incorporates data center, cloud computing and big data, transferring the computing demand of eastern to western China in an orderly manner.

"The western part of China is rich in resources, especially renewable resources, which is full of potential to develop data centers to serve the computing demand of eastern China," said Sun Wei, an NDRC official.

The plan will speed up the transfer of computing resources to eastern China and address the problem of unbalanced demand and need across the country.

Computing power has been regarded as a core productive force of the digital economy and vital infrastructure to national economic development.

The computing resource in western China will support computing in eastern China, thus empowering the development of the digital economy.

The NDRC also stressed that the computing capacity resource project is at the initial stage and blind development of data centers has to be avoided.