China Expands Computing Infrastructure Across Land, Sea, and Space

Xinhua News Agency reported that international media outlets are closely tracking the growth of China's computing infrastructure across diverse operational environments. Multiple centers located in the central and western regions, deep sea, and outer space leverage regional energy and environmental assets to expand the country's broader computing map. The Shanghai Lingang undersea data center project commenced operations in May 2026 as the first undersea facility combining direct offshore wind connections with natural seawater cooling. French media noted that rapid domestic demand, offshore engineering capability, and official policy backing enabled China to achieve an industry breakthrough. Space computing initiatives are also progressing through the Star Computing program, which plans a 2800-satellite network to construct an orbital infrastructure for artificial intelligence. Eight satellites in Group 02 carry high-performance payloads and low-light cameras to establish key capabilities such as on-orbit large model training. Coordinated planning has established an infrastructure layout focused on 8 national computing hubs, 10 national computing clusters, and 3 computing-power-coordinated regions. Official data indicated that China's installed intelligent computing capacity reached 2.5 times the level recorded during the corresponding period of the prior year by late March.

British commentary observed that undersea data centers directly tap renewable electricity while seawater provides natural cooling, effectively lowering energy consumption and conserving freshwater resources.