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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteChina is directing much of its next wave of large computing capacity toward designated hubs outside its biggest eastern cities because those cities face tighter land and energy constraints, while some western regions have more room and access to renewable power. The policy is not simply a drive for cheap rural land: it is an attempt to coordinate computing, electricity and network links across the country. Workloads that can tolerate delay are better candidates for remote hubs; services that need fast responses may remain closer to users.
What China’s “East Data, West Computing” policy is designed to do
China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) described the East Data, West Computing initiative in 2022 as a national plan to improve the location, balance, efficiency and interconnection of data-center capacity. It designated eight national computing hubs, with data-center clusters inside them, to concentrate large facilities and coordinate supply with demand. The stated aims include improving the use of computing resources, supporting greener development by locating some capacity near renewable energy, and promoting regional development.
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The geographic logic is asymmetric. The NDRC said eastern regions were facing increasingly tight land and energy resources, while western regions had more resources, particularly renewable energy. That does not mean every western site is automatically cheaper, greener or better supplied; it means national planners are trying to match capacity to regional advantages and connect the resulting hubs to demand elsewhere.
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Which AI and data workloads can move farther from users?
Distance matters most when a task must return a response quickly or move large amounts of data frequently. China’s policy therefore describes a tiered arrangement rather than sending every computing job west. The NDRC’s examples are planning guidance, not a rule that every instance of a given service must be located in one region.
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| Workload or service | Why location matters | Policy direction |
|---|---|---|
| Industrial internet, finance and securities, disaster warning, remote medical services, video calls, and AI inference | These services can depend on demanding network performance or prompt responses for users and businesses. | The NDRC identifies them as examples that may be placed in eastern hubs or closer to demand. |
| Model training, machine learning, video rendering, offline analysis, and backup | These jobs are more suitable for scheduled processing or transfer across regions than services requiring an immediate response. | The 2024 National Data Administration opinion names them among workloads to shift toward western hubs. |
Training and inference are not interchangeable from a siting perspective. Large model training can often be scheduled and distributed, while inference serves requests and may be latency-sensitive, especially when it is part of an interactive product or operational system. The policy’s inclusion of both reflects a goal of moving suitable work west, not a claim that all inference can be moved without affecting service.
How the 2024 policy concentrates new capacity
An August 2024 opinion from China’s National Data Administration made the siting direction more explicit: in principle, new large and extra-large data centers should not be built outside national hub nodes, and newly added computing capacity should cluster in those nodes. It also leaves room for efficient, low-carbon regional data centers outside the national hubs where renewable energy, location and industrial conditions make them suitable.
The plan is not a one-way pipeline from west to east. It calls for coordination among “East-to-East,” “West-to-West” and “East-to-West” computing, along with pooled resources, cross-region scheduling, data-transfer networks and flexible billing. The intent is to use nearby capacity where that makes sense and share capacity across regions where it can be done efficiently.
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Why western hubs can help with power and cooling
Renewable generation is a major part of the energy case, but proximity to wind or solar farms does not by itself guarantee that a data center runs on renewable electricity around the clock. Facilities need stable, reliable power, and national policy calls for matching new demand with dependable supply and flexible power arrangements. China’s Green and Low-Carbon Development Action Plan also calls for better energy and water efficiency, coordination with wind and solar bases, and exploration of direct green-power supply.
The plan lists facility-level measures including liquid and evaporative cooling, heat pipes, natural cooling, more efficient power systems and energy storage. These measures address different parts of the problem: cooling and power-conversion efficiency reduce facility overhead, while storage and flexible supply can help manage variable renewable output. The same plan says planners should account for both new energy and water demand, so abundant renewable potential should not be mistaken for abundant water at every western site.
Zhongwei illustrates the local opportunity—and its limits
A 2026 National Energy Administration-sponsored report gives Zhongwei, in Ningxia, as one example of how a hub can combine computing capacity with renewable projects. It reports a 500-megawatt solar farm supplying the area and a 1.5-gigawatt wind project that was under construction at the time of reporting. The renewable-power company operating the projects said they could meet about 2.29 billion kilowatt-hours of annual demand from the existing and planned Zhongwei cluster. A China Mobile Ningxia operations official told the report that natural cooling could be used for eight to ten months a year. These are location-specific, attributed figures, not a description of every western hub.
The same report, citing industry estimates, says electricity accounts for an estimated 60% to 70% of data-center operating costs. It attributes China’s data-center electricity use of 82.4 terawatt-hours in 2019 and 166 terawatt-hours in 2024 to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT). It also cites the International Energy Agency (IEA) for a global projection of 945 terawatt-hours per year by 2030. That last figure is a worldwide forecast, not a projection for China.
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What could constrain the strategy?
Remote capacity is useful only if it can be reached, scheduled and powered reliably. The 2024 policy calls for high-throughput links, cross-region scheduling and lower transmission costs. A June 25, 2026 Digital China report, crediting Xinwen Lianbo, said east-west fiber links were struggling to keep pace with computing expansion and described new backbone routes along high-speed rail lines. The report also described a China Unicom facility in Zhongwei designed for AI servers, saying those systems require more than 200 times the optical fibers of traditional servers. Treat that as a reported example, not an independently verified specification for all AI servers.
- Latency: Moving a workload away from users can add delay, so real-time and interactive services may be better placed closer to demand.
- Network capacity and cost: Fiber links and transfer economics must support the volume of data moving between hubs and customers.
- Reliable power: A data center must operate continuously; renewable resources need to be integrated with dependable supply.
- Water and local conditions: Cooling needs and water availability vary by site, making local resource planning essential.
- Utilization: Clustering and cross-region scheduling are meant to reduce redundant construction and improve use of capacity, but the infrastructure needs to be coordinated for that benefit to materialize.
These trade-offs explain why the strategy is selective. The right location depends on response-time requirements, data-transfer needs, power and cooling conditions, and whether a workload can be scheduled or shared across regions.
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Digital China’s June 2026 report said more than 30 data centers were under construction within a three-kilometer radius in Horinger New Area near Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. The 2026 National Energy Administration-sponsored report said Zhongwei had ten large data-center parks, that six of China’s ten largest internet data-center operators had a presence there, and that facilities supported training and inference for 13 large AI models and served more than 4,900 companies, citing municipal officials.
The same report said Zhongwei ranked fifth among 302 cities on a 2025 computing-power index and attributed a capacity figure of 283,100 petaflops to the municipal data administration. These local figures indicate the scale of activity being reported in the hubs; they are not independently audited measures of China’s total computing capacity.
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Are the policy targets already achieved?
The 2024 opinion set an end-2025 goal for more than 60% of newly added computing capacity to be located in national hubs and for green electricity to exceed 80% at newly built hub data centers. China’s Green and Low-Carbon Development Action Plan sets further efficiency and renewable-use goals. Those are stated targets; the cited policy documents do not establish whether they were met.
Zhongwei data-administration official Meng Fanzhen described planned coordination work this way: “We will work to build a platform that dynamically coordinates computing capacity and power supply, using computing demand to optimize electricity use.” The statement describes an intended platform, not proof that a nationwide service is already operating.
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