Server room of the Western (Chongqing) Science City Advanced Data Center, southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality, October 12, 2023. /CFP

Recent industry reports have highlighted China’s impressive advancements in the field of information technology this year, particularly in the cloud computing industry, which is laying the foundation for an intelligent transformation of the country’s industries.

Data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed that in the first half of this year, the value of China’s cloud computing market exceeded 260 billion yuan (around $35.6 billion), representing a year-on-year increase of over 40 percent.

During this period, major telecommunications, technology, and Internet companies in China increased their investments in the industry and expanded their businesses overseas.

In July, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) released a white paper on cloud computing, predicting that the market would surpass 610 billion yuan ($83.5 billion) by the end of this year.

The data also indicated that the total revenue from cloud-related businesses for China’s three major telecom operators in the first half of this year reached 113.6 billion yuan (about $15.6 billion), catching up with nearly 80 percent of last year’s total revenue in just six months.

Tang Daosheng, a senior executive vice president at Tencent, mentioned that the company has made significant progress in launching cloud products over the past few years.

“The demand for digital tools and artificial intelligence has greatly increased. Many of our cloud products have achieved double-digit growth in the international market,” Tang said.

The company has provided its cloud technical services in various countries and regions, including Singapore, Indonesia and the United States.

Liquid immersion cooling system for servers in the Western (Chongqing) Science City Advanced Data Center, southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality, October 12, 2023. /CFP

Behind this impressive leap in development are the nation’s policies aimed at promoting the high-quality growth of the computing power industry.

One significant initiative involves establishing eight national computing hubs and ten national data center clusters across the country since 2022.

These centers are strategically designed to transmit data collected from the more prosperous eastern regions of China to the less developed but resource-rich western regions for storage, calculation and feedback.

“Cloud computing data centers are an important foundation for the development of China’s digital economy, on which we can build a variety of applications,” said Ma Fei, the director of the Cloud Computing Department at the Institute of Cloud Computing and Big Data under the CAICT.

China has a substantial demand for computing power applications. According to Ma, the country’s intelligent computing power scale grew by 41.1 percent year on year in 2022, resulting in the rapid development of the cloud industry.

Currently, China has established 50 cross-field industrial Internet firms, providing services to over 230,000 enterprises.

Source: CGTN