China’s Data Production Hits 52.26 Zettabytes in 2025
China’s annual data production volume reached 52.26 zettabytes (ZB) in 2025, marking a 27.28% year-on-year increase and accounting for approximately 27.44% of global data production, according to official statistics. The figure, reported by the Cyberspace Administration of China in its National Informatization Development Report (2025), represents an increase of 11.2 ZB over the previous year’s 41.06 ZB and highlights the country’s rapid expansion of digital infrastructure and data-driven economy.
Context: A Data Superpower in the Making
China is the first country globally to formally designate data as a production factor, and the latest figures represent the third consecutive year of accelerated growth in national data output. According to the National Data Resources Survey Report (2025), released at the 9th Digital China Construction Summit in Fuzhou in April, annual data production grew from 32.85 ZB in 2023 to 41.06 ZB in 2024, and now to 52.26 ZB in 2025—a trajectory that signals the country’s data economy is entering a period of sustained rapid expansion.
The 2025 figure is equivalent to nearly 30 times the total storage capacity of all computing centers in China, underscoring the scale of the nation’s data-generating capacity. Data storage also grew significantly, reaching 2.53 ZB, up 21.1% year-on-year.
Enterprise Data Drives the Surge
Approximately 90% of the increase in data production comes from enterprise data, reflecting the accelerating digital transformation of China’s industrial sector. Industrial data reached 8.53 ZB, accounting for 25.43% of enterprise data production, with industrial equipment data representing over 30% of that total. Combined with software and IT services data, these two categories account for roughly half of all industry data production.
“Usually, a field with growth rate exceeding 10% is considered high-speed development,” said Jiang Mingtao, director of the National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center, as reported by CCTV News via Jiemian News. “China’s total data production has accelerated for three consecutive years, with 2025 growth rate reaching 27.28%. This high growth mainly comes from enterprise data. With the accelerated innovation and development of smart manufacturing and industrial internet, industrial data and software/IT services data together account for ‘half the industry.’ Digital transformation has effectively promoted data supply.”
AI and Emerging Technologies Reshape Data Landscape
Artificial intelligence has emerged as a transformative force in China’s data ecosystem. AI training and inference data reached 199.48 exabytes (EB) in 2025, up 42.86% year-on-year. Notably, inference data surpassed training data for the first time, reaching 101.34 EB, marking what analysts describe as a new stage where “training and inference are both important, with application-driven iteration.” AI token calls for the year reached approximately 21,100 trillion.
Emerging technology sectors are also generating explosive data growth. Embodied intelligence data grew 477.78% year-on-year, while low-altitude economy data grew 75%, according to the National Data Resources Survey Report. These figures reflect the rapid maturation of new industries and their increasing contribution to China’s data economy.
Policy Framework and Digital Infrastructure
The National Data Administration has pushed forward 40 policies covering data circulation security governance and data technology innovation, while national standards in the data field exceeded 120 by the end of 2025. The Government Data Sharing Regulation standardized government data catalog management and cross-department sharing mechanisms, and more than 10 ministries formulated industry-specific public data authorized operation systems.
Public data utilization has also expanded significantly. The national public data resource registration platform has registered over 160,000 data resources, products, and services, while 257 provincial and municipal local governments have launched data open platforms with nearly 480,000 open valid datasets. Trusted data space pilots are underway in 13 cities, 22 industries, and 28 enterprises.
China’s digital infrastructure continues to lead globally. Over 330 cities have 5G-A network coverage, with 5G covering more than 95% of administrative villages. The country operates over 13.73 million standard computing racks and 42 10,000-card intelligent computing clusters, with intelligent computing scale reaching 1.59 million PFLOPS. IPv6 network scale, user scale, and traffic scale all rank first globally.
Digital China: A Broader Picture
The Digital China Development Index reached 170.1 in 2025, up 12.99% year-on-year, according to the Digital China Development Report (2025) released by the National Data Administration. Digital economy core industry value added now exceeds 10.5% of GDP, with digital industry revenue growing 8.8% and software business revenue growing 13.2% year-on-year.
“In 2025, Digital China construction overall presents three characteristics: the ‘solid’ foundation continues to strengthen, the ‘integration’ effects continue to manifest, and the ‘good’ environment continues to optimize,” said Yu Ying, deputy director of the National Data Administration, as reported by Guangming Daily.
Analysis: What This Means
The sustained acceleration of China’s data production—with growth rates climbing from 22.44% in 2023 to 27.28% in 2025—reflects a structural shift in the country’s economic model. Data has become a core production factor driving the “new quality productive forces” strategy, with enterprise-led digital transformation serving as the primary engine.
The emergence of AI as both a consumer and producer of data marks a significant inflection point. The fact that inference data now exceeds training data suggests that AI applications are moving from development to real-world deployment at scale, a trend that expert analysis from the Chinese Academy of Sciences describes as “intelligence accelerating upgrade, profoundly reshaping the informatization development paradigm.”
What to Watch Next
As China enters the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), several questions will shape the next phase of its data economy. How the country balances data-driven growth with data security and privacy concerns will be critical, as will the development of international data governance frameworks in response to China’s growing data dominance. The continued expansion of AI-driven data production and its impact on traditional industries and workforce development will also merit close attention.
With data infrastructure, policy frameworks, and enterprise adoption all advancing in tandem, China’s data economy appears positioned for continued expansion—raising the question of just how much data the world’s second-largest economy can generate in the years ahead.