Why China’s Intelligent Computing Centers Are Poised for Explosive Growth

Introduction

Intelligent computing centers (ICCs) differ from traditional data centers by focusing on artificial‑intelligence workloads, offering higher compute density, stronger parallel processing, and optimizations for deep‑learning algorithms, thereby satisfying massive data‑processing and large‑model training needs in machine learning, computer vision, natural‑language processing and related fields.

Market Forecast

In recent years China’s ICC market has shown explosive growth. The rapid advancement of AI technologies, the rise of large models and generative AI have created a surge in demand for smart compute power.

Policy Guidance

Since the nationwide launch of the “East Data West Compute” (东数西算) initiative, the government has been building an integrated national compute network. The plan establishes eight major compute‑hub nodes and ten national data‑center clusters to guide resource allocation, promote coordinated development between eastern and western regions, and lay a policy foundation for ICC deployment.

Regional Distribution

East‑Coast Region : Guangdong leads with 23 ICCs across eight cities; Guangzhou leverages its digital‑economy and biopharma strengths, while Shenzhen integrates ICCs with AI, big‑data and other emerging industries.

Yangtze River Delta : Jiangsu’s deep‑manufacturing ecosystem and Zhejiang’s e‑commerce and digital‑culture leadership drive ICC adoption for intelligent manufacturing and data‑value extraction.

Central‑West Region : Under the “East‑West” strategy, provinces such as Guizhou exploit abundant hydro power and favorable policies to attract ICCs, Inner Mongolia uses wind and solar energy for green compute, and the Chengdu‑Chongqing economic circle accelerates ICC construction to support automotive, digital‑creative and biotech industries.

Northeast Region : Although fewer in number, ICCs in Liaoning, Heilongjiang and Jilin play crucial roles in upgrading traditional sectors—equipment manufacturing, precision agriculture and automotive autonomous‑driving research.

Operator Deployments

China Mobile has built an “n+x” large‑scale ICC infrastructure, reaching 19.6 EFLOPS (fp16) by June 2024—a 206 % year‑over‑year increase—and has commissioned 13 ICC nodes in key economic zones such as Beijing‑Tianjin‑Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta and the Greater Bay Area.

China Telecom plans a “2+3+7+x” public ICC cloud pool, achieving 13 EFLOPS by May 2024, with two massive “ten‑thousand‑card” clusters in the Beijing‑Tianjin‑Hebei and Yangtze River Delta regions and a “one‑city‑one‑pool” rollout covering 280 cities nationwide.

China Unicom has earmarked 65 billion CNY for a “1+n+x” tiered national ICC resource; by April 2024 its Jingxi Zhigu compute valley reached 500 PFLOPS, providing differentiated compute services for various industries and scales.

Industry Chain Structure

The upstream layer supplies civil‑engineering and IT infrastructure, the middle layer delivers ICC services, IDC and cloud offerings, and the downstream layer realizes value through applications in internet services, finance, telecommunications, transportation, healthcare, education and other sectors.

Future Outlook

With the deepening of the digital economy, ICC layouts will continue to optimise, concentrating further in strategic regions to generate scale and synergy effects while expanding into new domains and locations to achieve balanced compute distribution, lower operational costs and tighter collaboration among research institutes, universities and enterprises, thereby driving AI innovation and industry‑wide digital transformation.