China boosts construction of national computing hubs

BEIJING, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- China has approved projects to build eight national computing hubs and approved plans on 10 national-data center clusters, indicating the completion of the overall layout for the national integrated big-data center system.

The projects were approved by the National Development and Reform Commission and three other central departments, indicating a strategy is in full swing to channel more computing resources from the eastern areas to the less developed western regions.

The eight national computing hubs will be built in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, southwest China's Guizhou Province, northwest China's Gansu Province and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

The eight national computing hubs, as the backbone connection to China's computing network, will develop data-center clusters, carry out collaborative construction between data centers, cloud computing and big data, and bridge the gap between eastern and western regions in computing resources.

Along with big-data sector growth, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has unveiled a plan for the industry during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025). It forecasts that China's big-data industry will exceed 3 trillion yuan (about 474 billion U.S. dollars) by the end of 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of around 25 percent.