时间：2022-08-20 10:59:09
It’s hard to see what rice wine has in common with big data. But poor， mountainous Guizhou province in southwestern China， mainly known for the traditional liquor Maotai， is vying to be China’s main hub for data centers and cloud computing. According to Chinese media， the country’s big three state-owned telecom carriers have moved into the Guian New District， a development zone near the provincial capital Guiyang， since last October to set up data centers. These are clusters of networked computer servers that store and process vast amounts of digital information.
Joining them are over 100 hightech fi rms， including internet heavyweights Baidu， Sina and Sohu as well as e-commerce giant Alibaba. Lured by Guizhou’s manufacturing industry， low electricity prices and mild climate which makes it cheaper to keep buildings full of humming servers cool plus a host of tax and other incentives rolled out by provincial authorities， these companies are looking to cash in on the explosive growth of China’s digital ecosystem.
A data center boom is sweeping the nation. State-owned telecom provider China Unicom recently launched two huge data centers in Inner Mongolia’s Hohhot and Hebei’s Langfang， in addition to the facility currently under construction in Guizhou. The facilities will host a cloud service for government and enterprise customers， called WoCloud， which the company rolled out last December. China Telecom， too， is building a data center capacity in Inner Mongolia. News reports indicate that the facility will have 2 million servers， making it the largest data center of its kind in Asia.
In the meantime， Alibaba unit Aliyun， the largest cloud computing provider in China， is expanding at a rapid clip. Aliyun in June opened its fi rst data center in Beijing， boasting 10，000 servers. Foreign companies， too， are seeking a piece of the action. IBM announced in 2011 that it would build a goliath information center in conjunc- tion with Chinese tech fi rm Range Technology. Expected to be completed in 2016， the project in Langfang， serving local governments and foreign enterprises， will be nearly the size of the Pentagon at 6.2 million square feet.
Beijing recognized the potential of cloud computing for the fi rst time in the Twelfth Five-Year Guideline （2011-2015）， in which it was marked as a“strategic emerging industry.” This economic blueprint is an important tool with which to direct investment in key sectors. All of the above ties into the Chinese government’s goal of turning China into a global IT powerhouse. The endgame， as outlined in ambitious government plans， is to make the country an “innovation-driven country” by the 2020s and a world power in science and technology by 2050. “Efforts should be made to build our country into a cyber power，” President Xi Jinping said in February， after setting up a central leading group for“internet security and informatization” that he will preside over.