Guiyang, the capital city of Guizhou province in Southwest China, is positioning itself as a national computing power and algorithm supporting base. The city is attracting leading information technology companies to accelerate the development of its digital economy. Mayor Ma Ningyu aims to make computing power a public product, with a lower cost of use and a lowered threshold. He envisions a future where using computing power will be as easy as using electricity from a power grid.
Despite the rapid growth in China’s computing power resources, they are unevenly distributed, with most data centers located in eastern areas. Ma sees this as a potential strategic security risk. Additionally, a lot of electricity from western regions will need to be transmitted to the data centers in the eastern areas. To address these issues, China initiated a program in early 2022 to encourage the construction of computing power infrastructure in more western regions.
Guizhou is one of the eight national computing power hubs and has the Gui’an data center cluster, which is one of the 10 such national clusters. The cluster now has seven super-large data centers for three telecom giants and tech giants Apple, Tencent, and Huawei. The Internet bandwidth out of the province reached 38,000 Gbps, linking directly to 32 cities on the internet, data from local authorities showed. By 2025, the cluster will have 4 million servers.
The Gui’an data center cluster is not only serving top IT companies but also financial institutions, centrally administered state-owned enterprises, and national ministries and commissions. This year, three data center projects are about to be completed, nine are under construction, and eight have been newly introduced. The projects include expansion of existing centers and new ones serving companies such as tech firm NetEase, China Construction Bank, Bank of Communications, Industrial Bank, and State Power Investment Corp.
Guiyang’s GDP reached 492 billion yuan last year, with its digital economy contributing 44% of it, data from local authorities showed. Revenue growth of software and other IT services reached nearly 88%, contributing 44.5% to economic growth. The city is known as a major big data hub, and in recent years, it has been working to promote the construction of information infrastructure. The city’s cool weather, even in summer, makes it a suitable location for large-scale big data centers.
Read More: