With artificial intelligence a critical battleground in the China-US rivalry, a national computing network has already signed up more than 100 AI models
China is banking on artificial intelligence (AI) to become a new growth engine, and there are projections that it could add several trillion yuan to the economy by 2035 amid a national push for computing power and a unified data market.
Beijing is knitting together a national computing network. At the China Computing Power Conference held in Datong, Shanxi province, over the weekend, officials announced that 10 provinces and municipalities – from Shanghai and Zhejiang in the east to Qinghai and Xinjiang in the west – had joined a unified platform designed to match business demand with underused resources across regions.
State broadcaster CCTV said the platform had already signed up more than 100 service providers, 1,000 industry users and nearly 100 AI models.
The country has invested heavily in expanding computing power over the past five years, and its smart computing power is projected to grow by 43 per cent this year, according to an AI-computing-power assessment report published earlier this year by the International Data Corporation and Inspur Information.
