China’s government has announced a plan to significantly increase the country’s overall computing power by 2025.
According to the plan, which was released on Monday by six different government departments, China aims to boost its aggregate computing power by more than 50% over the next three years.
This plan comes amid rising competition between China and the U.S. in many high-tech areas ranging from semiconductors and supercomputers to AI, including U.S. export controls on chipmaking equipment.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, one of the departments involved in the plan, has set a target of achieving a total computing power of 300 EFLOPS by 2025. This figure refers to the number of floating-point operations per second that a computer can perform.
In August, it was reported that China’s computer power had risen from 180 EFLOPS in 2022 to 197 EFLOPS this year.
Recognizing the growing demand for computing power, China is placing increasing emphasis on expanding access to this vital resource, particularly given the computational requirements of artificial intelligence training. Part of the strategy includes the expansion of data centers across the nation.
Additionally, Beijing has outlined plans to modernize the computing infrastructure in western China, responding to the rapid growth of the AI industry.
Historically, China’s less densely populated provinces, such as southwest Guizhou, have been entrusted with constructing large-scale data centers to support the nation’s internet needs. For instance, Apple has partnered with local entities to establish data centers in Guizhou to serve its users in the region.
Improving the speed and efficiency of the computer network is another key objective outlined in the proposal.
It specifies that critical computer facilities must have transmission speeds that ensure latency times of no more than 5 milliseconds.