Conceptual diagram of AI Photo: VCG

China has in recent years stepped up efforts to build a national integrated computing power network, which is designed to connect scattered computing facilities into a unified system, improve efficiency and broaden access to computing resources for businesses and public services, according to industry experts on Sunday. 

The network is becoming a core infrastructure for the digital economy and artificial intelligence (AI), while also supporting emerging industries such as autonomous driving, the low-altitude economy and synthetic biology, they said.

In Hohhot, North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, one of China's major computing hubs, operators are racing to complete new data center projects and secure low-cost electricity, CCTV News reported on Sunday.

In Inner Mongolia, the comprehensive electricity price for computing centers is about 0.33 yuan ($0.048) per kilowatt-hour, less than half the 0.76 to 0.80 yuan seen in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Yangtze River Delta regions, Zhang Jianxue, a manager from China Mobile's Inner Mongolia cloud computing center, told CCTV News.

To balance cost, supply stability and green energy use, a flagship project in the region directly supplies wind and solar power to a state-level computing cluster through a dedicated transmission line, bypassing the public grid, CCTV News reported. 

Li Chao, general manager of Huadian Inner Mongolia Energy, said that the first-phase 360-megawatt project is already in operation. He said that it can deliver more than 700 million kilowatt-hours of green electricity to data centers each year and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 630,000 tons annually. The second- and third-phase 500-megawatt projects have been approved and are scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. 

Inner Mongolia's experience reflects the broader rollout of China's national computing power network. As of May, the region's total computing power reached 315,000 petaflops, including 297,000 petaflops of intelligent computing power, accounting for about one-seventh of the national total, official data showed.

Computing power has become a key productive force in the digital economy era, making the development of a national integrated computing power network essential for high-quality growth, Tian Feng, former dean of SenseTime's Intelligence Industry Research Institute, told the Global Times on Sunday. 

With abundant green energy, western provinces are evolving from traditional energy suppliers into providers of computing power, creating a fast-growing pattern of complementary development between east and west. The network is turning western green power into eastern computing capacity and helping convert China's resource strengths into digital-economy competitiveness, Tian said.

Demand for AI computing capacity is surging at an extraordinary pace. CCTV News cited figures from the National Data Administration showing that China's average daily token usage had exceeded 140 trillion by the end of March, more than 1,000 times higher than at the beginning of 2024. 

Tian said that the explosive growth reflected the rapid expansion of large-language AI model applications, cloud services, and AI-powered industrial systems.

Chinese authorities unveiled several measures this year to promote the computing sector.

According to the Xinhua News Agency, China is mulling multi-trillion-yuan investment through a "Six Networks" initiative, covering water networks, new-type power grids, computing power networks, next-generation communication networks, urban underground pipeline networks and logistics networks. 

In the country's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30), China highlighted the need to deepen the "East Data, West Computing" initiative and build a multi-tier computing infrastructure system as well as a national integrated computing power network.

Global Times