By Agatha Cantrill / AFP, GUIAN NEW AREA, China
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In China’s hilly Guizhou Province, a cluster of European-style buildings complete with clock tower and 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 the past few years. They are part of a government strategy that has seen much of the digital infrastructure for breakneck artificial intelligence (AI) development across China’s eastern seaboard established in the country’s less populated, rural west.
Customers shop inside a Huawei store at Haikou International Duty-Free City in Haikou, China, on Sunday last week.
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 US intensifies and countries everywhere try to swerve a computing crunch that could stymie AI expansion.The projects have transformed some places — such as Guian New Area, where the Huawei data center and others are located.
