Employees walking into Chinese technology company Huawei's European-themed data center in Guian New Area in Guiyang.
In China's hilly Guizhou province, a cluster of European-style buildings complete with a clock tower and a multi-arched bridge emits a low, permanent hum—a clue to its unexpected identity as tech giant Huawei's largest data center.
The town-like complex is unique in design, but not in its placement. Dozens of data centers have been constructed in the southwestern province in recent years.
They are part of a government strategy that has seen much of the digital infrastructure for breakneck AI development across China's eastern seaboard established in the country's less populated, rural west.
The build-out is ongoing. China is on course to nearly double its data center capacity within the next five years, as a tech race with the United States intensifies and countries everywhere try to swerve a computing crunch that could stymie AI expansion.
