China: China approves ten data center clusters

China has announced that it has approved a large-scale project to build eight national integrated computing hubs with ten data center clusters. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and three other central departments (the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), and the National Energy Administration) approved the project as part of the drive to push China towards a more digitally advanced future, enhancing computing capacity. 

In a statement, the NDRC said: "The eight national computing hubs, as the backbone connection to China's computing network, will develop data center clusters, carry out collaborative construction between data centers, cloud computing, and big data, and bridge the gap between eastern and western regions in computing resources."

The national computing hubs will be built in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the eastern Yangtze River Delta region, the southern Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the southwestern 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.

It is estimated that investment in the project will reach around 400 billion yuan ($63 billion), which means the planning of the national integrated big data center system is complete. This also marks the official start of the country's strategic project of "transporting data from eastern regions of China to western regions for storage and calculation."

NDRC official Sun Wei in a recent interview with Xinhua outlined: "Like with the South-to-North Water Diversion Project and the west-east power transmission program, we should give full play to the advantage of the country's system and mechanism to make integrated arrangements at the national level."

Adding: "The implementation of the project is conducive to promoting the green development and utilizing green energy in the western regions, and continuously optimizing the energy efficiency of data centers."

Speaking to the Global Times, Wang Peng, an assistant professor at the Gaoling School of Artificial Intelligence at the Renmin University of China, said that the clusters could bolster employment in the west of the country.