China: NetEase Breaks Ground On Guizhou Data Center

NetEase Inc., a Chinese Internet business, has begun construction on a new data facility in Guizhou province. According to China Daily, this month the company began work on its first large data center in Guian New Area in southwest China. The campus, situated on 7,3 hectares, will support NetEase's operations and have the capacity for 10,000 racks at complete build-out. In the coming five years, 5,000 data center racks will be constructed throughout the course of the first phase of the project, which is expected to commence trial operation in September. 

China-based NetEase, founded in 1997, designs and manages online Mobile and PC games, advertisements, search engines, email providers, music streaming, and e-commerce platforms. Additionally, the company has a number of pig farms. Per its 2021 ESG report, NetEase has office campuses in Hangzhou, Beijing, and Guangzhou, as well as an unspecified number of leased data facilities; its 2020 ESG report indicates their locations are in Hangzhou and Beijing. Additionally, the company is an AWS customer. 

Huawei, Tencent, and Apple, among others, operate data centers in Guizhou.