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China’s digital economy: network of data centre hubs to address infrastructure imbalance between east and west
- Four of China’s top regulatory and policymaking agencies will spearhead the strategy dubbed ‘Eastern Data and Western Computing’
- The country had about 5 million data centres in 2020, up from 1.24 million in 2015
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China will launch a new national data centre strategy to further expand the country’s digital economy, while meeting Beijing’s ambitious green targets, according to a report by state media China Central Television (CCTV) on Wednesday.
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The initiative, dubbed “Eastern Data and Western Computing”, will have data gathered from the more prosperous cities along China’s eastern seaboard sent to poorer yet more spacious urban centres in the west for processing and storage.
Four of the country’s top regulatory and policymaking authorities – the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), Cyberspace Administration of China, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and the National Energy Administration – will spearhead implementation of this strategy, according to the CCTV report. No timetable was given.
“[Under this plan], we are trying to solve the problem of supply imbalance of data centres between the east and the west,” said Shen Zhulin, director of the NDRC’s Department of High-Tech Industry, at the opening on Wednesday of the three-day China International Big Data Industry Expo 2021 in Guiyang, capital of southwestern Guizhou province. The NDRC is the main agency involved in drafting China’s five-year plans.
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The strategy will involve setting up national data centre hubs in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area, the Yangtze River Delta region, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, the Chengdu-Chongqing city cluster, Guizhou province and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, as well as the northwestern province of Gansu and the Ningxia Hui autonomous region.
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