China is looking to spend nearly $300 billion over the next five years to build more data centers across the country, as Beijing strives to gain ground on the US in the AI race.
The government wants to construct a network of “computing hubs,” Bloomberg reported. “The primary beneficiary of the plan is the economy as a whole,” an analyst wrote, given Beijing’s push to integrate AI across sectors to boost productivity.
The country’s buildout, though, serves as a cautionary tale for the US, where public backlash to expanding AI infrastructure is growing, a China tech expert argued in Project Syndicate: There is a “growing mismatch between supply and demand” in China, with some data centers underutilized and hundreds of projects reportedly canceled.
