Establishing Highland for Computing Power, Guizhou's Big Data Industry Seizes the Opportunities from the "East-Data-West-Computing" Strategy

GUIYANG, China, Aug. 11, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- A news report by Huanqiu.com

As the digital economy develops rapidly, computing power has become the core engine driving the industrial development. Relying on its forward-looking layout plan and unique resource advantages, Guizhou province has achieved a critical leapfrog in China's "East-Data-West-Computing" strategic blueprint, and transformed into a frontline hub and innovation highland of computing power supply today from a rear base of data storage in the past.

With the explosive growth of AI, the intelligent computing demand has increased quickly since the beginning of this year. To become a frontrunner in the intelligent computing sector, Guizhou has taken the lead in building a computing power highland. Its computing power has totaled 85 Eflops, where intelligent computing accounts for over 98% and reaching a homemade rate of approximately 90%. Guizhou has become one of the regions in possession of the most powerful homemade intelligent computing capacities in China.

Such extraordinary intelligent computing power is pillared by robust digital foundation. Currently a total of 48 key data centers are under construction or in service in Guizhou, including 28 large-scale data centers with a total storage capacity of up to 25EB, equivalent to the size of 5 billion HD movie files of 5GB each. This means that Guizhou is capable of efficiently bearing the load of valuable data resources required for AI training such as texts, images and videos. It is thoroughly repositioning the big data industry to transform from a storage center to the mode of integrating storage and computing with priority given to intelligent computing.

The upsurge of computing power depends on resilient energy supply, and the electricity consumption data demonstrate the bursting vitality of the intelligent computing sector in Guizhou. According to the statistics from the Gui'an Power Supply Bureau, the data center cluster increased its electricity consumption by 54.25% on a year-on-year basis in Gui'an New Area, Guiyang City, in the first quarter of 2025, while the big data centers had the most noticeable growth in their electricity consumption, up to 517.18% year on year. To meet such soaring power demand, Gui'an Power Supply Bureau has made forward-looking deployment for developing an energy supply system, by constructing one 220kV substation, four 110kV substations and one hundred and thirty 10kV dedicated transmission lines, thereby forming a safe and reliable power supply network.

Faced with the exponentially growing energy demand caused by large AI models, Guizhou has actively explored a path of green development to convert its rich green electricity resources into a deadlock breaker. Whilst hydropower and coal-fired power provide a solid foundation for energy supply, the installed capacity of new energy supply facilities has been growing fast as well, and registered 34.98GW by the end of May 2025, accounting for 35% of Guizhou's total capacity, making new energy the second largest power source in Guizhou.

The installed capacity of new energy supply facilities has been expanded continuously, and the construction of the power grid has upgraded meanwhile. Gui'an New Area kicked off the construction of a 500kV substation this year. After being put into operation, this substation will increase a 4GW capacity locally, to effectively support the electricity needs of Huawei, Tencent and other large data centers. Till then, the main grid structure of Gui'an New Area will take on a new look of "one ring, three cores and three zones".

Policy support acts as a key booster of Guizhou's computing power development. In November 2024, Guizhou released the revised edition of the Management Measures of Guizhou for Computing Power Vouchers, sending out a strong positive signal. According to the Measures, adaptation and model training services for domestic computing power are included in the scope of the Computing Power Vouchers incentive policy, and will receive a financial subsidy based on a ratio of 30%, with the upper limits of 1.5 million yuan and 5 million yuan, respectively. The policy effect quickly emerged so that as of January 2025, Guizhou had issued 177 vouchers nationwide, which would facilitate computing power transactions of more than 10.5 billion yuan.

In 2025, Guizhou will further reinforce its computing power strength, and advance the construction progress of projects worth over 7.5 billion yuan, covering the Huawei Cloud Global Computing Center. Pilot efforts will be made for a national integrated computing power network to promote the coordination of electricity and computing, and also networking and computing. The computing power voucher policy will be further consummated to drive computing power businesses to an estimated beneficiary scale of 12 billion yuan.

The rise of Guizhou vividly interprets the optimal resource allocation under the national strategy of "East-data-west-computing", and clarifies the new paradigm of propelling high-quality development with green computing power. Different from a simple industrial shift, west China proactively redefines a digital future by fully leveraging its resource endowment and innovation courage. Computing power is underpinning the coordinated regional development across China in this era when productivity is reshaped by computing power.

SOURCE Huanqiu.com