Computing power an important engine driving China's economic growth

More efforts should be made to build green, low-carbon and safe data center clusters, network infrastructures and integrated computing power scheduling systems in Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, as part of a broader push to inject new impetus into the country's digital economy, a senior official said.

Computing power, which serves as a core productive force in the era of digital economy, has become an important engine driving China's economic growth, said Mai Yanzhou, member of the Standing Committee of CPC Ningxia Committee and Vice-Governor of Ningxia Hui autonomous region.

Mai made the remarks at the first Data Valley in Western China Computing Industry Conference, which kicked off on Thursday in Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia.

Mai said that, in recent years, Ningxia has given full play to its unique advantages in terms of location, climate and resources to promote the digital transformation of industries, industrialization of digital technologies and development of the digital economy.

A batch of tech companies from home and abroad such as Amazon Web Services, Meituan, China Unicom, China Mobile and China Telecom have built data centers in Ningxia to offer cloud computing services, Mai added.

In addition, a total of 14 strategic cooperation agreements worth 271 billion yuan ($38.9 billion) and 24 projects with an investment of 72.7 billion yuan were signed during the conference.

In February, the country launched a mega project involving the construction of eight national computing hubs and 10 national data center clusters, indicating that its strategy to channel more computing resources from the country's eastern regions to its less developed yet resource-rich western regions is in full swing.

The project is conducive to promoting the green development and utilizing green energy in the western regions, and continuously optimizing the energy efficiency of data centers, experts said.

China's total computing power scale now ranks second in the world, said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. By the end of 2021, super-large and large data centers in use exceeded 450 nationwide, while intelligent computing centers surpassed 20, the ministry said.