China Plans Fivefold Surge in Intelligent Computing Power by 2030

China has set a target to expand its intelligent computing capacity more than fivefold by 2030 compared to 2025 levels, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's 15th Five-Year development plan for the information and communications sector. Supported by an estimated 4 trillion yuan in fresh direct investment during the upcoming plan period, policymakers are pushing to unify regional data infrastructure into an integrated national computing grid. The initiative builds on the country's multi-year "East Data, West Computing" strategy to support surging artificial intelligence workloads across industrial manufacturing and scientific research.

Computing power is the fundamental utility driving the artificial intelligence boom. By shifting from standalone data centers to a unified, coordinated national computing network, China aims to balance massive computing demand in eastern economic centers with renewable energy resources in the west. A projected 4 trillion yuan investment wave will directly stimulate server manufacturing, high-bandwidth telecommunications, and green power integration.

China aims to increase its national intelligent computing capacity by more than five times by 2030 compared to 2025 levels, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's development plan for the information and communications sector under the upcoming 15th Five-Year Plan period. Industry experts project that the buildout of a unified national computing network will attract approximately 4 trillion yuan ($560 billion) in direct investment during the 15th Five-Year Plan period. These capital flows are expected to focus heavily on ultra-large-scale intelligent computing clusters and computing-electricity coordination, designed to support surging commercial demand from artificial intelligence models, industrial manufacturing, and scientific research. China has steadily accelerated the integration of regional data infrastructure since launching its national "East Data, West Computing" initiative in 2022. By the end of June, the country's intelligent computing capacity reached 2,185 exaflops (EFLOPS), marking a 177 percent increase compared to the previous year, according to domestic media reporting on a media briefing tour of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. To coordinate these distributed resources, Chinese authorities have launched trial operations for a national integrated computing network monitoring and dispatch experimental platform, which now monitors over 60 percent of the nation's computing power. Policymakers emphasize that the initiative involves more than simply linking server racks together. Yu Xiaoyu, an associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research's Institute of Industrial and Technical Economics, noted that the network requires integrating computing, high-speed optical networking, communication protocols, and energy infrastructure across cloud, edge, and terminal layers. Regional hubs are already demonstrating low-latency integration. In northern China's Hebei province, transmission latency between data centers in Langfang and downtown Beijing has dropped to two milliseconds. Official figures show Hebei's intelligent computing scale reached 556.1 EFLOPS by the end of June, supported by 2.504 million operational standard racks, leading the country in both metrics. The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology ranked Hebei first nationally in its 2025 comprehensive computing power index, with the northern cities of Langfang and Zhangjiakou occupying the top municipal positions for two consecutive years.