China’s “East Data West Compute” Initiative: Building National Computing Hubs and Data Center Clusters

On June 17, the National Development and Reform Commission and other ministries approved the construction of national computing hub nodes in the Beijing‑Tianjin‑Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, the Guangdong‑Hong Kong‑Macao Greater Bay Area, Chengdu‑Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu, and Ningxia, and planned ten national data‑center clusters, completing the overall layout of an integrated big‑data center system and officially launching the “East Data West Compute” project.

The initiative is likened to the “South‑to‑North Water Transfer” project: massive data generated in the eastern regions will be transmitted to western data‑center hubs, where abundant renewable energy and lower land costs enable efficient, large‑scale compute provision.

China’s compute demand is rising rapidly with the digital economy; current data‑center capacity reaches 500 million standard racks and 130 EFLOPS, while demand is expected to grow over 20% annually, creating a pronounced east‑west imbalance.

Western regions offer abundant renewable energy but face bandwidth and inter‑province transmission cost challenges, whereas eastern regions have high power costs and limited space for new data centers; the program aims to redesign the national compute network to address this mismatch.

Eight hub nodes and ten clusters have been defined. The hubs (Beijing‑Tianjin‑Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Greater Bay Area, Chengdu‑Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu, Ningxia) will concentrate policy and resources to optimize network, energy, and land use, while the clusters (Zhangjiakou, Yangtze River Delta Eco‑Green Demo, Wuhu, Shaoguan, Tianfu, Chongqing, Gui’an, Helingeer, Qingyang, Zhongwei) designate contiguous administrative areas for large‑scale data‑center construction with strict PUE and renewable‑energy targets.

Benefits of the program include raising national compute capacity, improving energy efficiency and green energy utilization, attracting investment across the data‑center supply chain, and promoting balanced regional development by shifting compute resources and related industries westward.

For compute‑providing enterprises, the initiative facilitates cloud‑network integration, reduces power and network costs, and improves resource allocation; for compute‑consuming enterprises, it offers more convenient, cost‑effective compute services, accelerating digital transformation.

The “East Data West Compute” alliance, formed in September 2020, already includes major tech firms such as Huawei, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, and others, which are deploying data‑center projects in western cities, indicating the early realization of the program’s advantages.