When west computes data for east

The National Development and Reform Commission released a document outlining the preparation made to construct eight national computing hubs and 10 national data center clusters.

This marks the start of the "east computed by the west" project, which is aimed at coordinating the computing capabilities between the eastern and coastal provinces and the western inland regions.

One of the eight primary ways to ensure the prosperity of the digital economy in the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) is to upgrade the digital infrastructure, such as strengthening the coordination of the computing capabilities of different regions. The idea is to meet the need for computing in the east through infrastructure located in the west.

Computers being indispensable in today's age, data centers are all the more important, as servers are the storehouse for important data dealing with bank accounts, social security information, credit and education records. The need for computing is quite high in the eastern coastal regions where the population density is high.

Domestic data centers account for around 2 percent of the country's total power consumption. Setting up such centers would also increase the burden on the eastern region's power requirement, which is already very high. However, under the project, computing for eastern provinces can be carried out in the western regions, thus reducing the pressure on energy.

It helps that western regions have abundant renewable resources. The Three Gorges project is located in Chongqing municipality, while the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region has a large number of solar panel farms. When the centers located in the west compute for the east, it will ensure usage of greener energy, helping China to realize carbon peaking before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.

Setting up computing centers in the west will also help create more jobs there. Next, more investments could follow, which can do wonders for the western regions' economy and shrink the east-west gap.