How China Telecom Is Building the Nation’s First “National Cloud” and Its Global Impact
China Telecom is creating a state‑backed “national cloud” by partnering with multiple central‑enterprise investors, consolidating resources, accelerating indigenous cloud technology, and setting ambitious infrastructure targets, while similar initiatives emerge worldwide in the US, Russia, India, France and Italy.
On July 12, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) held a meeting on deepening professional integration of central enterprises, during which China Telecom announced the formation of a national‑cloud company with several central‑enterprise strategic investors.
The initiative aims to coordinate technology innovation, facility construction, and security deployment to accelerate the development of an original cloud technology ecosystem.
Thirteen professional‑integration projects were signed at the meeting, reflecting a broader policy to reduce duplicate investment, concentrate resources on core businesses, and cultivate world‑class enterprises.
China Telecom’s “one cloud, two wings” strategy introduces investors such as China Electronics, China Electronics Technology Group, China Chengtong and China Guoxin, establishing the diversified‑ownership Tianyi Cloud Technology Co. to promote cloud resource integration across central enterprises.
Joint R&D with central enterprises and institutions like Tsinghua University is strengthening an autonomous cloud technology ecosystem; Tianyi Cloud now operates 31 provincial subsidiaries and a unified cloud‑network operation system.
According to IDC, Tianyi Cloud’s public‑cloud IaaS + PaaS market share reached 8.9% in the second half of 2021, ranking fourth after Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud and Huawei Cloud.
China Telecom’s roadmap for the national cloud includes achieving “thousand cities, thousand pools” by 2025, deploying 1.2 million servers and exceeding 13 EFLOPS of computing power, and building a “2+4+31+X+O” layout of cloud and big‑data centers.
The plan also targets 2 trillion CNY revenue from flagship national‑level applications, aims for core‑technology self‑control, and seeks to reduce reliance on foreign products by developing a secure, sovereign cloud platform.
Parallel efforts are underway globally: the US Department of Defense’s cloud initiatives (including the JEDI project), Russia’s and India’s national‑cloud programs, France’s “trusted cloud” strategy, and Italy’s national strategic cloud tender.
These developments illustrate a worldwide push for sovereign cloud infrastructures that support government services, digital transformation, and strategic autonomy.
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