China’s Data Production Hits 52.26 Zettabytes in 2025

China produced 52.26 zettabytes (ZB) of data in 2025, a 27.28% increase year-on-year, according to the National Data Resource Survey Report (2025) released at the 9th Digital China Summit in Fuzhou, Fujian Province. The figure represents approximately 27.44% of global data output, cementing China’s position as a global leader in the data economy.

The report, released by the National Data Administration, marks the third consecutive year of accelerating data production growth, following increases of 22.44% in 2023 and 25% in 2024. National data storage also grew to 2.53 ZB, up 21.05% year-on-year, according to the official release.

AI Surpasses IoT as Primary Data Source

A landmark shift occurred in 2025: data generated by system software and artificial intelligence reached 26.92 ZB, overtaking Internet of Things (IoT) data for the first time as the dominant source of data production. Liu Liehong, head of the National Data Administration, announced the figures at the summit’s opening ceremony, as reported by Xinhua.

“This marks that AI has entered a new stage featuring equal emphasis on training and inference as well as application-driven iteration,” Liu said.

The AI transformation is reflected in the data. Total data used for AI training and inference reached 199.48 exabytes (EB) in 2025, up 42.86% year-on-year. Notably, inference data volume hit 101.34 EB, surpassing training data volume for the first time—a sign that AI systems are moving from development into real-world deployment.

Token usage—the smallest units of information processed by large AI models—grew exponentially. Average daily token calls surged from over 1 trillion at the beginning of 2025 to 100 trillion by year-end, with annual cumulative calls reaching approximately 21,100 trillion, according to CGTN.

Enterprises Drive Data Growth

Enterprises have emerged as the primary engine of data production, contributing nearly 90% of incremental data output in 2025. This underscores significant progress in industrial digital and intelligent transformation across China’s manufacturing and service sectors.

Jiang Mingtao, director of the National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center, provided expert context on the trend: “Usually, a sector growing by more than 10% is considered high-growth. China’s total data production has accelerated for three consecutive years, with the strong 2025 growth mainly driven by enterprise data. As smart manufacturing and the industrial internet continue to expand, data generated by industry, software and information technology services now account for nearly half of all industry data output, showing that digital transformation has effectively boosted data supply,” as reported by CCTV News.

By sector, industrial manufacturing, transportation/logistics, and software/IT services saw the largest absolute increases in data production, adding 1.27 ZB, 1.22 ZB, and 0.92 ZB respectively. Emerging sectors showed even more dramatic growth: embodied AI data production surged 477.78%, while low-altitude economy data grew 75%.

The value added by core digital economy industries now accounts for more than 10.5% of China’s GDP, reflecting the deepening integration of digital technologies into the broader economy.

Data Infrastructure and Smart Computing Scale Up

China’s data infrastructure continued its rapid expansion in 2025. National smart computing scale reached 1.59 million PFLOPS (FP16) by year-end, with the eight national computing hubs—including ten clusters—accounting for over 80% of national smart computing capacity. The “East Data, West Computing” project has accelerated the buildout of a national integrated computing network.

High-quality datasets exceeded 110,000, with total scale surpassing 908 petabytes (PB), up 61.13% and 142.58% respectively year-on-year. Structured data storage reached 0.56 ZB, up 43.59%, indicating a shift toward more usable, computable data formats.

Data Circulation and Market Development

Data circulation across China accelerated significantly. Cross-province data circulation reached 2,949.12 EB, up 19.01%, while cross-border data circulation hit 142.34 EB, up 14.88%. Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, and Henan led in cross-province data flows, according to ECNS.

Enterprise data circulation grew 25.17% to 1,935.36 EB, with 11.65% of sampled enterprises purchasing data—and data purchase costs rising 22.36%. Financial and software/IT service industries saw over 30% of enterprises purchasing data, well above the national average. Enterprise data technology investment grew 17.37%, while data products and services grew 29.29% with transaction value up 39.8%.

Policy Framework Strengthens

The policy environment for data governance continued to mature. The National Data Bureau advanced 40 related policies covering data circulation security governance and data technology innovation. The Government Data Sharing Regulations standardized government data catalog management and cross-department sharing mechanisms, while more than 10 ministries formulated public data authorized operation systems.

By end of 2025, national standards in the data field exceeded 120. The National Data Bureau released 100 public data demonstration scenarios and organized the 2025 “Data Elements ×” competition with 19 departments, publishing 241 typical cases. Trusted data space pilot construction is underway in 13 cities, 22 industries, and 28 enterprises.

The national public data resource registration platform has registered over 160,000 data resources, products, and services, while 257 provincial and city-level local governments have launched data open platforms, opening nearly 480,000 valid datasets, as reported by Guangming Daily.

A New Phase in the Data Economy

China’s designation as the world’s first country to treat data as a factor of production has yielded measurable results. The 2025 Digital China Development Index reached 170.1, up 12.99% year-on-year. China has also become the world’s largest AI patent holder, accounting for 60% of global AI patents.

With 2026 designated as the “Data Element Value Release Year” and marking the first year of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan, the trajectory is clear: China’s data resource scale advantage is accelerating its conversion into value advantage. As Xinhua English reported, the country’s digital infrastructure is being upgraded at an accelerating pace.

Looking ahead, the emergence of a “token economy”—where computing activity becomes quantifiable, tradeable, and central to economic production—represents a fundamental shift in how economic value is measured and exchanged. The exponential growth in token calls, from 1 trillion to 100 trillion daily, signals not just growing demand for AI services but the dawn of a new economic paradigm.

For global observers, China’s data economy trajectory offers both a benchmark and a challenge. The country’s ability to generate, store, and monetize data at unprecedented scale—while simultaneously building the policy infrastructure to govern it—positions it at the forefront of the global data economy. The question now is how quickly this data advantage translates into broader economic leadership in the years ahead.