China Links 31 Regions in Unified Computing Power Grid

China has achieved nationwide integrated monitoring of its computing power, with a national platform now connecting the systems of all 31 provincial-level regions, according to Xinhua News. The milestone, announced at the 2026 China Computing Conference, marks the basic formation of what officials describe as a “one network, one chessboard, one integration” development pattern for the country’s computing resources.

The China Computing Platform — a national-level comprehensive computing service platform — reported the breakthrough at the conference held Sept. 11–13 in Langfang, Hebei, under the theme “Jointly Weaving the Computing Network, Intelligently Enabling a New Future.”

Context: From Pilot to National Grid

The announcement caps a multi-year effort to coordinate computing infrastructure across a vast and unevenly developed country. In 2022, Beijing launched the “East Data West Computing” initiative, designating eight national computing hub nodes and ten data center clusters to channel computing demand from wealthier eastern regions toward western areas with cheaper land and power.

In August 2025, the China Computing Platform completed platform access for just 10 provincial regions, forming an initial “global overview, sub-domain coordination” pattern. One year later, that figure has expanded to all 31 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions, per China News.

Officials said the push was driven by persistent structural problems: a dispersed computing layout, unclear resource baselines, lagging dynamic monitoring, and insufficient cross-regional coordination.

Key Developments: A Monitoring System That Sees Everything

As of June 2026, China’s intelligent computing scale reached 2,185 EFLOPS (FP16), up 177 percent year-on-year. The country has built more than 70 computing transmission channels linking its hubs and key regions and approved 17 national computing internetworking regional nodes.

He Baohong, chief engineer at the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said the platform’s expansion has effectively broken down regional barriers and data silos. “The China Computing Platform has orderly promoted the connection of platforms from all 31 provinces, built a unified, standardized, coordinated and efficient national computing situational awareness monitoring system,” he said. He added that the effort pushes computing construction “from extensive scale expansion toward intensive, efficient, all-domain coordination.”

The platform’s “computing supermarket” operating layer now reports more than 10,000 registered enterprise users, over 200 computing service providers, more than 2,000 listed computing products, and over 300 large models connected — accumulating billions of computing monitoring data records.

Zhong Zhihong, chief engineer at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, outlined four priorities for the next phase: strengthening systematic planning to improve utilization efficiency; deepening computing-network integration; advancing indigenous technological innovation; and expanding application to empower small and medium-sized enterprises. He said the ministry will accelerate the buildout of a “hub-region-edge” multi-level, tiered computing architecture and deploy city-level millisecond access on demand.

Analysis: Beyond Building, Toward Using

The significance of the announcement lies less in raw capacity numbers than in a shift in policy focus. As He noted, the government’s attention “has expanded from building computing facilities to whether resources can be sensed, scheduled, and ultimately genuinely used by enterprises and industries.”

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently issued its 15th Five-Year Plan for the information and communications industry, calling for faster construction of the national integrated computing network and deeper automated monitoring and supply-demand matching. In August 2026, the ministry also launched a special action to extend “inclusive computing power” to small and medium-sized enterprises.

That effort introduced two market mechanisms now being watched closely. Guo Liang, chief engineer at CAICT’s Cloud Computing and Digitalization Research Institute, described the “computing bank” as a kind of “piggy bank” for computing power — letting enterprises deposit idle resources during slow business periods and withdraw them when needed, coordinated through cross-regional, cross-period intelligent scheduling.

The “computing supermarket,” meanwhile, functions like an e-commerce trading market where firms can flexibly buy computing products billed by “card-hour,” “core-hour,” and Token, according to 21st Century Business Herald. Shanghai, Zhejiang, Shandong, and Ningxia have already begun piloting such models.

A parallel priority is the coordination of computing with energy — often called “computing-power coordination.” AI data centers are enormously electricity-intensive, and officials stressed the need for sustained, stable, and flexible power supplies. Zhao Ce, deputy director of the MIIT’s Information and Communications Development Department, said coordination of computing, network, and power “is the inevitable path for deepening and expanding AI,” urging enterprises to increase clean energy use through green power direct supply and source-grid-load-storage technologies.

Industry executives echoed the theme. China Telecom General Manager Liu Guiqing cited a fully liquid-cooled green computing center in Zhangjiakou’s Huailai campus with a 98 percent clean energy share, while China Mobile General Manager Chen Yangfan pledged to pursue full-stack domestic innovation “from chip to model.” According to Securities Times, the platform will next deepen cross-regional computing sharing and accelerate the rollout of integrated scheduling.

What’s Next

The connection of all 31 regions gives China a unified, real-time view of its computing resources for the first time — a foundation for the coordinated scheduling that policymakers see as essential to competing in AI. The focus now shifts to execution: whether the platform can genuinely match supply with demand, reduce costs for smaller enterprises, and reconcile rising power needs with clean energy goals.

For now, the message from Langfang is clear. China’s computing buildout is entering a new phase — one where the question is no longer how much capacity exists, but whether it can be sensed, moved, and used.